experiment with woman and dolphin

Margaret Howe Lovatt And The Government Experiment That Led Her To Intimate Relations With A Dolphin

In the mid-1960s, margaret howe lovatt was tasked with training and observing dolphins on st. thomas. over the years, she developed an intimate relationship with a dolphin named peter..

When a young Carl Sagan visited St. Thomas’ Dolphin Point laboratory in 1964, he likely didn’t realize how controversial the setting would become.

Sagan belonged to a secretive group called “The Order of the Dolphin” — which, despite its name, focused on searching for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Also in the group was the eccentric neuroscientist Dr. John Lilly. His 1961 quasi-sci-fi book Man and Dolphin highlighted the theory that dolphins wanted to (and likely could) communicate with humans. Lilly’s writings sparked a scientific interest in interspecies communication that set in motion an experiment that went a bit awry with a young woman named Margaret Lovatt.

Trying To Connect Dolphins And Humans

Astronomer Frank Drake headed the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. He’d spearheaded Project Ozma, the search for extraterrestrial life through radio waves emitted from other planets.

Upon reading Lilly’s book, Drake excitedly drew parallels between his own work and Lilly’s. Drake helped the doctor secure funding from NASA and other government entities in order to realize his vision: a communicative bridge between human and dolphin.

John Lilly then built a laboratory housing a workspace on the upper level and a dolphin enclosure on the bottom. Tucked away on the picturesque shore of the Caribbean, he called the alabaster building Dolphin Point.

When 23-year-old Margaret Howe Lovatt realized that the lab existed, she drove there out of sheer curiosity. She fondly remembered stories from her youth where talking animals were some of her favorite characters. She’d hoped to somehow witness the breakthrough that could see those stories become reality.

Arriving at the lab, Lovatt encountered its director, Gregory Bateson, a famous anthropologist in his own right. When Bateson inquired as to Lovatt’s presence, she replied, “Well, I heard you had dolphins … and I thought I’d come and see if there was anything I could do.”

Bateson allowed Lovatt to watch the dolphins. Perhaps wanting to make her feel useful, he asked her to take notes while observing them. Both he and Lilly realized her intuitiveness, despite any lack of training and offered her an open invitation to the lab.

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Margaret Howe Lovatt Becomes A Diligent Researcher

Soon Margaret Howe Lovatt’s dedication to Dr. Lilly’s project intensified. She worked diligently with the dolphins, named Pamela, Sissy, and Peter. Through daily lessons, she encouraged them to create human-esque sounds.

But the process was becoming tedious with little indication of progress.

Margaret Howe Lovatt hated leaving in the evenings and still feeling that there was much work left to do. So she convinced Lilly to let her live in the lab, waterproofing the upper rooms and flooding them with a couple feet of water. This way, human and dolphin could occupy the same space.

Lovatt chose Peter for the revamped, immersive language experiment. They co-existed in the lab six days of the week, and on the seventh day, Peter spent time in the enclosure with Pamela and Sissy.

Through all Peter’s speech lessons and voice training, Lovatt learned that:

“when we had nothing to do was when we did the most … he was very, very interested in my anatomy. If I was sitting here and my legs were in the water, he would come up and look at the back of my knee for a long time. He wanted to know how that thing worked and I was so charmed by it.”

Charmed might not be the word to describe how Lovatt felt when Peter, an adolescent dolphin with certain urges, became a bit more… excited. She later told interviewers that he “would rub himself on my knee, my foot or my hand.” Moving Peter back down to the enclosure each time this happened became a logistical nightmare.

So, reluctantly, Margaret Lovatt decided to satisfy the sexual urges of the dolphin manually. “It was just easier to incorporate that and let it happen … it would just become part of what was going on, like an itch, just get rid of that scratch and we would be done and move on.”

Lovatt insists:

“It wasn’t sexual on my part … sensuous perhaps. It seemed to me that it made the bond closer. Not because of the sexual activity, but because of the lack of having to keep breaking. And that’s really all it was. I was there to get to know Peter. That was part of Peter.”

Meanwhile, Drake’s curiosity about Lilly’s progress grew. He sent one of his colleagues, the 30-year-old Sagan, to check the goings-on at Dolphin Point.

Drake was disappointed to learn that the nature of the experiment was not as he’d hoped; he’d expected progress in deciphering the dolphin language. This was likely the beginning of the end for Lilly and his crew’s funding. Nevertheless, Lovatt’s attachment to Peter grew, even as the project waned.

But by 1966, John Lilly was more enthralled with the mind-altering power of LSD than he was with dolphins. Lilly was introduced to the drug at a Hollywood party by the wife of Ivan Tors, the producer of the movie Flipper . “I saw John go from a scientist with a white coat to a full blown hippy,” Lillie’s friend Ric O’Barry recalled.

Lilly belonged to an exclusive group of scientists licensed by the government to research the effects of LSD. He dosed both himself and the dolphins at the lab. (Though not Peter, at Lovatt’s insistence.) Luckily the drug seemed to have little to no effect on the dolphins. However, Lilly’s new cavalier attitude towards the animal’s safety alienated Bateson and put a stop to the lab’s funding.

Thus Margaret Howe Lovatt’s live-in experience with a dolphin ended. “That relationship of having to be together sort of turned into really enjoying being together, and wanting to be together, and missing him when he wasn’t there,” she reflects. Lovatt balked at Peter’s departure to Lilly’s cramped Miami lab with little sunlight.

A few weeks later, some terrible news: “John called me himself to tell me” Lovatt notes. “He said Peter had committed suicide.”

Ric O’Barry of the Dolphin Project and Lilly’s friend validates the use of the term suicide. “Dolphins are not automatic air-breathers like we are … Every breath is a conscious effort. If life becomes too unbearable, the dolphins just take a breath and they sink to the bottom.”

A heartbroken Peter didn’t understand the separation. The sorrow of losing the relationship was too much. Margaret Howe Lovatt was saddened but ultimately relieved that Peter the dolphin didn’t need to endure life at the confined Miami lab. “He wasn’t going to be unhappy, he was just gone. And that was OK.”

Lovatt remained in St. Thomas after the failed experiment. She married the original photographer that worked on the project. Together, they had three daughters and converted the abandoned Dolphin Point laboratory into a home for their family.

Margaret Howe Lovatt didn’t speak publicly of the experiment for nearly 50 years. Recently, however she granted interviews to Christopher Riley for his documentary on the project, the aptly named The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins .

After this look at Margaret Howe Lovatt and the strange experiments that she participated in with dolphins, learn more about how dolphins communicate . Then, read up on the fascinating development of military dolphins .

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How A Science Experiment Led to Sexual Encounters Between a Woman and a Dolphin

A new documentary tells the story of Margaret Howe Lovatt, who in the 1960s took part in a NASA-funded research project, in which she developed an unusual relationship with a dolphin named Peter.

On June 17th, the BBC will debut a new documentary, The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins . It's the story of Margaret Howe Lovatt, who in the 1960s took part in a NASA-funded research project, in which she developed an unusual relationship with a dolphin named Peter. A relationship that at times became sexual.

The emotional attachment between humans and animals is well documented. Like any animal and human who spend long amounts of time together, a dolphin trainer could say they "love" their dolphin, but this does not excuse nor open the door for zoophilia or delphinophilia. While I am a dolphin enthusiast, I am also a firm believer that humans and dolphins should not have sex.

Investigating the case of Margaret Howe Lovatt and Peter the dolphin, it was a relationship that started out of a logistical problem. In 1964, Lovatt was working on an experiment to try to teach Peter how to communicate with humans. ( A dolphin to human translator is still in the works today. ) She literally moved in with him for three months , sleeping next to the tank, and working on a desk that hung over the water where he swam. They spent a great deal of time together, and as Peter was a sexually maturing adolescent dolphin, he often had sexual urges at inconvenient times.

As it turns out, it's very difficult to teach a dolphin to talk when he is aroused. Lovatt found that Peter " would rub himself on my knee, my foot or my hand." She allowed it, "I wasn't uncomfortable — as long as it wasn't too rough. It was just easier to incorporate that and let it happen, it was very precious and very gentle, Peter was right there, he knew that I was right there."

In order to satisfy Peter's increasing sexual urges, he would be transported to another pool with two female dolphins. This was a logistical nightmare and it disrupted his communication lessons constantly. Eventually, Lovatt took it upon herself to relieve Peter of his urges, rather than going through the long and inconvenient process of transporting him, " It would just become part of what was going on, like an itch, just get rid of that scratch and we would be done and move on."

Sexual acts between dolphins and humans have a history. Malcolm Brenner wrote the book Wet Goddess about his nine-month long relationship with a dolphin. At the Nottingham Trent University, Dr. Mark Griffiths has studied delphinophiles (humans sexually attracted to dolphins.) There are also a number of blogs and online communities dedicated to the study and appreciation of dolphin sex. (Note: this link is graphic and contains details of zoophilia, click at your discretion.)

The relationship between Lovatt and Peter was certainly unnatural, but not unheard of. Still, I strongly urge you to stay away from dolphins in a sexual capacity, even if you believe they turn into handsome men at night .

You can watch the full clip below and see more previews on the BBC's YouTube page .

About the Author

Margaret Howe Lovatt: The Woman Who Fell in Love with a Dolphin

Many of us know all too well what it’s like to love an animal. We’re often willing to go to great lengths to care for our pets. The close bonds that result can be as strong as any. But how far can they be taken? Enter Margaret Howe Lovatt.

Lovatt is best known for being involved in a controversial experiment in the 1960s. In this research project, she attempted to teach a dolphin named Peter to speak English. It is considered to be one of the most fascinating and controversial stories of its kind.

Lovatt’s attempt to teach the animal led to some insights into dolphin behavior and communication. But it also raised questions about the ethics of animal experimentation and the limits of such relationships.

As Lovatt developed a close bond with Peter, their relationship gradually progressed, even becoming sexual. Some reports suggest that she even fell in love with him.

Altogether, the story of Margaret Howe Lovatt and the Dolphinarium experiment is a captivating, thought-provoking tale. It is every bit as riveting and scandalous as it sounds.

The Dolphinarium Experiment

In the middle of the 1960s, fascinating research was underway. This was during the tumult of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement, on the tiny Caribbean Island of St. Thomas.

Lovatt, a naturalist, was living on the island. She was volunteering at a laboratory doing research with dolphins. There, she met John C. Lilly, a neuroscientist. He happened to be working with NASA and the U.S. Navy and was building a “Dolphinarium.”

The Dolphinarium experiment was a controversial project that aimed to teach dolphins the human language, specifically English. It was an incredible, extraordinary idea, but the researchers involved believe it to be worth a try.

Margaret Howe Lovatt was assigned to live with and train the dolphins in the facility. She believed that living with the dolphins and making human-like sounds would help in mimicking human language.

Throughout her research, she spent most of her time with a male bottlenose dolphin named Peter. However, their relationship gradually progressed beyond just a typical animal-human friendship.

Margaret’s Teaching Methods and Her Relationship with Peter

Lovatt’s teaching methods were initially fairly straightforward. They were only slightly out of the ordinary.

She lived by the dolphins and spoke to them often. The theory was that similar to a child copying their mother, they would be able to teach the dolphins something about how to speak English.

Lovatt grew closest to Peter. He was a young, but mature, male dolphin at the Dolphinarium. She spent almost two years with him.

Lovatt worked closely with the young dolphin. She documented Peter’s progress twice a day. She spoke slowly and alternated her tone to attempt to get Peter to recreate the words and sounds she wanted him to learn, like “Hello Margaret.”

According to Lovatt, the “m” sound was particularly challenging. But it seems progress was made in other areas.

However, Peter was a sexually maturing adolescent dolphin, and as such he often had sexual urges. This presented certain challenges. As Lovatt and Peter spent more time together in the isolated Dolphinarium, they continued to grow closer, with Lovatt even hinting that Peter liked to be close to her.

Before long, the male dolphin made advances. He rubbed himself on her and disrupted their lessons.

It wasn’t enough to just separate the two when these urges arose. It began to hinder the research completely. To “fix” this, Lovatt did what some might consider unthinkable. When Peter became aroused, Lovatt would “relieve” the dolphin herself in what many considered to be a legitimate sexual act.

Of course, Lovatt saw this as part of her work and even felt that this was something that deepened their close bond. But she refused to consider the behavior as sexual. In the end, many did not see things the same way.

Ethical Concerns and Controversy

Word got out about the nature of Lovatt’s relationship with Peter. The whole situation quickly became a source of controversy and there were allegations of animal abuse.

It was also rumored that Lovatt had injected him with LSD. This added to the uproar. This was largely a conflation with other, separate research.

Still, the relationship between Margaret Howe Lovatt and Peter the dolphin is often cited as an example of the ethical issues surrounding animal experimentation. While Lovatt intended to teach Peter to speak, their relationship gradually became more intimate. The lines between research and personal attachment became blurred.

The allegations raised important questions – and fiery debates – about the ethical boundaries of human-animal relationships. Were Lovatt’s actions abuse? They were surely disturbing and unthinkable to many. But did the specifics of their relationship amount to any real wrongdoing?

For her part, Lovatt denied any wrongdoing and maintained that her relationship with Peter was purely scientific. Though the controversy surrounding the experiment had lasting implications.

Despite the uproar, Lovatt maintained her relationship with Peter. Their relationship went from needing to be together for research, to a relationship of actually enjoying and missing each other when they were apart. Due to an eventual lack of funding for the Dolphinarium, their time together came to an end. The pair split up and Peter was sent to a new home in Miami.

Tragically, Peter the dolphin would commit suicide not long after. Some believe it was the heartbreak of being separated from Lovat. Whereas others cite the small tank and inhumane conditions of his new home.

Media Coverage and Scientific Impact

The ordeal drew widespread media attention. It continues to be a topic of interest and debate today. After an article on Lovatt’s sexual relationship with Peter appeared in the popular magazine, Hustler , the research was largely frowned upon publicly.

Scientifically, little was achieved in the way of teaching dolphins to speak English. However, it does seem that these efforts are still ongoing today in other research labs.

The scientific community largely responded negatively. They raised concerns about behavioral ethics and the potential impact on the well-being of Peter. The controversy surrounding the experiment and Lovatt’s relationship with Peter overshadowed much of the science being done.

Today, Lovatt’s story serves as a cautionary tale about the boundaries of our relationships with animals and the importance of ethical considerations in all manners of scientific research.

Mosendz, Polly. “How a Science Experiment Led to Sexual Encounters between a Woman and a Dolphin.” The Atlantic, June 11, 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/how-a-science-experiment-led-to-sexual-encounters-for-a-woman-and-a-dolphin/372606/ .

Riley, Christopher. “The Dolphin Who Loved Me: The NASA-Funded Project That Went Wrong.” The Guardian, June 8, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/the-dolphin-who-loved-me .

Winfrey, Tiffany. “Woman Admits Having Sexual Experience with Dolphin as Part of NASA Study in the 1960s.” The Science Times, November 7, 2022. https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/40844/20221107/woman-admits-having-sexual-experience-with-dolphin-as-part-of-nasa-study-in-the-1960s.htm.

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In 1965, a young woman lived in isolation with a male dolphin in the name of science. It got weird

Week 5 of Margaret Howe’s diary is concerned with a new issue: Peter's 'sexual needs' are frustrating research. She decides to take matters into her own hands

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From outside it looked like another spacious Virgin Islands villa with a spiral staircase twisting up to a sunny balcony overlooking the Caribbean Sea. But Dolphin Point Laboratory on the island of St Thomas was part of a unique Washington-funded research institute run by Dr John C Lilly, the wackiest and most polarizing figure in marine science history. A medic and neurologist by training, a mystic by inclination, he was intent on furthering his investigations into the communication skills of dolphins, who he believed could help us talk to extraterrestrials.

For 10 weeks, from June to August 1965, the St Thomas research centre became the site of Lilly’s most notorious and highly criticized experiment, when his young assistant, Margaret Howe, volunteered to live in confinement with Peter, a bottlenose dolphin. The dolphin house was flooded with water and redesigned for a specific purpose: to allow the 23-year-old Howe and the dolphin to live, sleep, eat, wash and play intimately together. The objective of the experiment was to see whether a dolphin could be taught human speech – a hypothesis that Lilly, in 1960, predicted could be a reality “within a decade or two.”

In 1965, a young woman lived in isolation with a male dolphin in the name of science. It got weird Back to video

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Even dolphin experts who today hold some of Lilly’s other work in high regard believe it was deeply misguided. Media coverage at the time focused on two things: Howe’s almost total failure to teach Peter to speak; and the reluctant sexual relationship she began with the animal in an effort to put him at his ease. She has not spoken about her experiences for nearly 50 years (to “let [the story] fade”), but earlier this year accepted an interview request by the BBC producer Mark Hedgecoe, who thought it was “the most remarkable story of animal science I had ever heard.”

The result, a documentary called The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins, is set to premiere at Sheffield Doc/Fest and then on BBC Four later in June. Various films and documentaries have dissected some of the baffling, entertaining and ultimately tragic animal-human language experiments offered up by the Sixties and Seventies, most recently James Marsh’s 2011 feature Project Nim, about a chimp raised in a New York family. But what makes the dolphin house story unique is the intensity of the period of interspecies cohabitation. Howe and Peter lived in complete isolation.

Prof Thomas White, a philosopher and international leader in the field of dolphin ethics, believes the experiment was “cruel” and flawed from the outset. “Lilly was a pioneer,” he says. “Not just in the study of the dolphin brain; he was an open-minded scientist who speculated very early on that dolphins are self-aware creatures with emotional vulnerabilities that need an array of relationships to flourish. That should have made him think: ’I really shouldn’t be doing this kind of thing’?”

Lilly, who had gained the scientific establishment’s respect with his work on the human brain, became interested in dolphins in the Fifties, after performing a series of “inner-consciousness” investigations on himself in which he floated around for hours in salt water in an effort to block outside stimuli and increase his sensitivity.

His 1961 book Man and Dolphin was an international bestseller. It was the first book to claim that dolphins displayed complex emotions – that they were capable of controlling anger, for example, and that they, like humans, often trembled in response to being hurt. Some dolphin species, he said, had brains up to 40% larger than humans’. As well as being our “cognitive equal,” Lilly speculated they were capable of a form of telepathy that was the key to understanding extraterrestrial communication. He also believed they could “teach us to live in outer space without gravity”. He also proposed that they could be trained to serve the Navy as a “glorified seeing-eye” (a theory that became the basis of the 1973 sci-fi thriller Day of the Dolphin, despite Lilly’s best attempts to halt production).

If you want to do your experiments on solitude and LSD, please keep them in the isolation room. I am not curious or interested

But Lilly did little to burnish his credentials in the early Sixties when he started exploring the psychological research possibilities offered by lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). He took it himself, often while floating in his isolation tank. Lilly later pinpointed 1965, the year of the dolphin cohabitation experiment, as the year he came to “no longer regard the scientific viewpoint of total objectivity as the be-all and end-all.” It wouldn’t be wildly speculative to suggest that Lilly was – by today’s standards at least – not in quite the right frame of mind to be leading the dolphin project.

Looking back at his memories of the mid-Sixties in his autobiography, an impressionistic account in which he writes of himself in the third person (“He felt that he was merely a small microbe on a mudball, rotating around a G-star, two thirds of the way from Galactic centre…”), it is also apparent how removed he was from Howe’s work.

He writes: “In the midst of his enthusiasm he [Lilly] attempted to speak to [Howe] of his experiences.” Howe, in her early 20s, was not sympathetic. “If you want to do your experiments on solitude and LSD, please keep them in the isolation room. I am not curious or interested.”

Howe was among many keen young staff members he employed from the island. Only the bravest stayed with him any significant length of time; as Lilly noted in The Mind of the Dolphin (1967), the Tursiops (bottlenose) – chosen for study because its brain size was comparable to man’s – was larger and more powerful than most humans. They grew irritable and angry when mismanaged. Howe’s talent for communicating with the dolphins was exceptional and, as Lilly noted, her dedication was unmatched by anyone else in the faculty. “I will not interfere with that,” he wrote.

Still, he prepared the experiment. Following a week-long trial period, Lilly decided 10 weeks was the maximum time frame that both human and dolphin could survive comfortably in confinement. Objectives, regulations and a daily timetable were clear and precise. Howe’s aims were threefold: to make notes on interspecies isolation, to attempt to teach Peter to “speak,” and to gather information so that the living conditions might be improved for longer-term cohabitation.

Cooking is fine. Cleaning is interesting… Each morning most of the dirt is neatly deposited at the foot of the elevator shaft. All I have to do is suck it up

On June 15 Howe moved in, her hair cut to a quarter-inch boy crop. All she needed was a swimming costume and a leotard for the cooler nights. The entire upstairs of the lab building and the balcony had been flooded with salt water 18in deep, which Peter could swim around in and Howe could wade through. A desk hung from the ceiling, and her bed was a suspended foam mattress that she later fitted with a shower curtain so that Peter’s splashes did not soak her through the night. She would live off canned food to minimise contact with outsiders.

“It was perfect,” she remembers today of her domestic dolphinarium. Early entries in her diary at the time reveal that, like a nervous new housewife, she made the best of things: “Cooking is fine. Cleaning is interesting… Each morning most of the dirt is neatly deposited at the foot of the elevator shaft. All I have to do is suck it up.” As for her companion, he spent “a good deal of his time in front of the mirror,” she noted. She was amused to find that during rare moments of contact with the outside world (mostly on the telephone) Peter talked “very loudly and in a competitive way” over the top of her.

Although he could be rambunctious, the archive footage of his lessons featured in the new BBC documentary reveal Peter to have been a curious, dedicated student. Lilly’s team had already established that dolphins could adjust the frequency of their squeaks and whistles to mimic human sounds, and claimed that during his time with Howe, Peter learnt to pronounce words such as “ball” and “diamond”, and to tell the difference between certain objects.

Howe was a creative, commendably patient teacher; when Peter struggled with certain sounds, particularly the “M” in her name, she came up with the inventive method of painting her face in thick white make-up and black lipstick so that he could clearly see the shape of her lips moving. “His eye was in [the] air looking at my mouth. There was no question… He really wanted to know: where is that noise coming from? What is the sound?” she remembers. “Eventually he kind of rolled over so that he would bubble [the ’M’ sound] into the water.”

To those who lived and worked with Peter, his progress was perhaps clearer than it was to the outsider. The average viewer, on watching the BBC documentary, might conclude that the experiment was a failure. Kenneth Norris, an influential marine biologist, said of Lilly: “He started out as a capable scientist, but nothing he did was subject to measurement or truth, and that’s what scientists live by.” Experiments since 1965 have proved that dolphins have high levels of self-awareness and can understand human sign communication – but there is still little evidence that a dolphin language exists.

Peter begins having erections and has them frequently when I play with him

However, Peter’s linguistic progress was seemingly what kept Howe going when their relationship grew strained. Fed up and clearly exhausted by week three, she wrote at length about Peter whining and making loud noises night and day for no apparent reason: “I will do anything to break this… I lost my temper and nearly yelled at Peter… I am physically so pooped I can hardly stand… depression… wanting to get away… my mind is not all on the job.”

Lilly, responding to Howe’s feedback, recorded his concerns. “This is a dull and small area… Isolation effects showing,” he wrote. Howe’s diary of week five is predominantly concerned with a new issue: “Peter begins having erections and has them frequently when I play with him.” Her frustrated efforts to deal with his “sexual needs” and advances – which had become so aggressive that her legs were covered in minor injuries from his jamming and nibbling – had left her scared. “Peter could bite me in two,” she wrote. But she was reluctant to hamper progress, and, in a spirit of pragmatism, decided to take matters into her own hands. As the narrator in the documentary tactfully puts it: “Margaret felt that the best way of focusing his mind back on his lessons was to relieve his desires herself manually.”

Sex among dolphins is a “normal way to establish a bond”, White says. “Dolphins are mostly bisexual, sometimes heterosexual, sometimes homosexual, and quite frequent – eight to 10 times a day I’ve been told – so it’s a very different culture that we’re looking at.” Peter’s sexual advances wouldn’t surprise any marine biologist. But what astonished Lilly was the complexity of the way Peter and Howe’s relationship developed from thereon in.

“New totally unexpected sequence of events took place,” Lilly noted excitedly. “I feel that we are in the midst of a new becoming; moving into a previous unknown…” As Peter became increasingly gentle, tactile and sensitive to Howe’s feelings he began to “woo” her by softly stroking his teeth up and down her legs. “I stand very still, legs slightly apart, and Peter slides his mouth gently over my shin,” she wrote in her diary. “Peter is courting me… he has been most persistent and patient… Obviously a sexy business… The mood is very gentle, still and hushed… all movements are slow.” Today she talks about the whole experience philosophically: “It was very precious. It was very gentle… It was sexual on his part. It was not sexual on mine. Sensual, perhaps.”

Howe’s writing also reflects her increasingly protective feelings towards Peter, and at the end of her diary she admits that Peter’s attentiveness helped her overcome her “depression” and “fits of self-pity.”

It was great [Howe] wasn’t going to be damaged… but as a veterinarian, I wondered about poor Peter. This dolphin was madly in love with her

In a neat romantic twist, it all ended happily for Howe. She left the lab to marry the project’s photographer, John Lovatt. Though dismayed to lose her, even Lilly was pleased: “Her intraspecies needs are finally being taken care of.” She never returned to work for him. Soon after the experiment, Lilly’s funding began to dry up, and with his second marriage in tatters he left to explore mystical interests in South America.

As for Peter, the lab’s vet Andy Williamson remembers his concerns as the experiment came to a close: “It was great [Howe] wasn’t going to be damaged… but as a veterinarian, I wondered about poor Peter. This dolphin was madly in love with her.”

The unexpected consequences of the experiment highlight one of the persisting problems with the “short-sighted” scientific approach to animal intelligence, says White. “We focus on language as the primary indicator of intelligence. Dolphins, like humans, are very sophisticated emotionally as well as intellectually. From an ethical standpoint, that’s what we should be looking at.”

The Sunday Telegraph

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Woman admits sexual experience with dolphin as part of Nasa study

Kate Gill | Tuesday 21 September 2021 11:28 BST

‘It was gentle’: Woman describes sexual experience with dolphin during Nasa study

A woman who took part in a NASA-funded experiment involving dolphins said the animals became so close to her that one tried to have sex with her.

Speaking to the BBC, Margaret recalled one dolphin - named Peter - used to “rub himself” against her knees, hands and feet in a “sexual” way.

“It was sexual on his part - it was not sexual on mine, sensuous perhaps,” she said.

The animal lover, who lived in the Caribbean, had just turned 20 when she was told about the programme being held on a “secret island” in 1963.

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How A Science Experiment Led to Sexual Encounters Between a Woman and a Dolphin

RELATED: Obama Takes Aim at ISIL, Russia in Fiery NATO Farewell

RELATED: Pentagon Confirms Somali Terrorist Group Leader Was Killed By U.S. Airstrikes

You can watch the full clip below and see more previews on the BBC's YouTube page .

This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/06/how-a-science-experiment-led-to-sexual-encounters-for-a-woman-and-a-dolphin/372606/

The Impossible Love: How A Dolphin Fell In Love With A Woman During A Nasa Experiment

Published by Healthdor Editorial on June 20, 2024

This article explores the extraordinary connection that developed between a dolphin and a woman during a NASA experiment, and the potential health and psychological implications of interspecies relationships.

The NASA Experiment

During the 1960s, NASA conducted a series of experiments to study the effects of isolation and sensory deprivation on living beings. One of the most remarkable experiments involved a dolphin named Peter and a young woman named Margaret Howe. The goal was to see if a dolphin could learn to speak English by living in close quarters with a human for an extended period of time.

As the experiment progressed, something unexpected happened. Margaret and Peter developed a deep bond that went beyond the scope of the research. They spent hours together each day, and Peter became increasingly affectionate towards Margaret. This led to speculation about whether interspecies relationships could have potential health and psychological implications.

According to WHO , strong relationships, whether with humans or animals, can have a positive impact on mental health . The bond between Margaret and Peter could be seen as a form of companionship that provided emotional support for both parties. This is consistent with research that shows the benefits of human-animal interaction in reducing stress and improving overall well-being.

However, the nature of the relationship between Margaret and Peter raised ethical questions. While the experiment was intended to further scientific knowledge, it also raised concerns about the welfare of the dolphin. It's important to consider the well-being of animals in research settings and to ensure that they are treated with respect and care.

Despite the controversy surrounding the experiment, it shed light on the capacity for connection and communication between different species. While Peter did not learn to speak English as the researchers had hoped, the bond he formed with Margaret was a testament to the power of empathy and understanding across species boundaries.

The Dolphin's Affection

During a NASA experiment in the 1960s, a remarkable bond formed between a dolphin named Peter and a researcher named Margaret Howe. This unexpected connection between a human and a dolphin has fascinated scientists and the public alike, raising questions about the nature of interspecies relationships and the potential implications for both physical and psychological well-being.

The story of Peter and Margaret's relationship began when Margaret was tasked with teaching Peter to speak English as part of a larger effort to understand dolphin communication. As they spent hours together each day, a deep affection developed between them. Peter became increasingly attached to Margaret, seeking her attention and companionship.

This bond between a human and a dolphin is a rare occurrence, but it sheds light on the capacity for emotional connection across species. Studies have shown that dolphins are highly intelligent and social animals, capable of forming complex relationships with both humans and other dolphins.

While the emotional aspect of the relationship between Peter and Margaret is fascinating, it also raises important questions about the potential impact on the well-being of both parties. Research has shown that positive social interactions can have significant benefits for mental health, reducing stress and promoting overall well-being. However, the unique nature of interspecies relationships introduces a new level of complexity.

One of the key considerations is the ethical implications of such relationships. As humans, we have a responsibility to ensure the welfare of animals under our care, including those involved in scientific research. The potential for exploitation or harm to the animals must be carefully considered and regulated.

Furthermore, there are potential health risks associated with close contact between humans and animals. While dolphins are generally considered to be gentle and friendly, there is always a risk of injury or disease transmission in close proximity. This is especially relevant in the context of scientific research, where the well-being of both humans and animals must be a top priority.

Despite these challenges, the story of Peter and Margaret offers valuable insights into the nature of interspecies relationships and the potential for emotional connection across species. It serves as a reminder of the importance of ethical considerations and responsible research practices in the study of animal behavior and communication.

The Woman's Perspective

As we delve into the incredible story of a dolphin falling in love with a woman during a NASA experiment, it's crucial to consider the woman's perspective in this unique interspecies relationship. Margaret Howe Lovatt, a young researcher, was tasked with living in close quarters with a dolphin named Peter as part of a NASA-funded experiment in the 1960s. What started as a scientific endeavor quickly evolved into a deeply emotional and controversial bond between human and dolphin.

From Margaret's point of view, the experience was both fascinating and challenging. She found herself forming a strong connection with Peter, who responded to her kindness and companionship. The woman's perspective sheds light on the emotional complexity of interspecies relationships and the ethical considerations that arise from such unconventional bonds.

It's important to acknowledge the potential health implications of this extraordinary relationship. Research has shown that interactions with animals can have a positive impact on human well-being. According to the World Health Organization , spending time with animals can reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. In Margaret's case, her connection with Peter provided emotional support and companionship during the isolation of the experiment.

However, it's also crucial to consider the ethical and psychological implications of interspecies relationships. The controversy surrounding Margaret and Peter's bond raises important questions about the boundaries of human-animal interactions. The National Institute of Mental Health highlights the potential risks of anthropomorphism and the need for clear ethical guidelines in animal-assisted therapy.

From the woman's perspective, the love and companionship she shared with Peter challenged societal norms and sparked a conversation about the nature of interspecies relationships. Margaret's experience serves as a powerful reminder of the emotional depth and complexity of animal connections, urging us to consider the ethical, psychological, and emotional dimensions of human-animal bonds.

The Impact on Health

Interspecies relationships have always been a topic of fascination and curiosity for humans. The story of a dolphin falling in love with a woman during a NASA experiment is an extraordinary example of such a connection. While this unique bond may seem heartwarming, it also raises important questions about the impact on health, both for the individuals involved and the broader implications for interspecies interactions.

When it comes to the health effects of interspecies relationships, there are several factors to consider. One of the most significant aspects is the potential for zoonotic diseases, which are illnesses that can be transmitted between animals and humans. According to the World Health Organization , zoonotic diseases account for a significant percentage of all infectious diseases in humans. Close contact with animals, especially in intimate relationships, can increase the risk of transmission.

Furthermore, the psychological impact of interspecies relationships cannot be overlooked. While the bond between the dolphin and the woman may have been emotionally fulfilling for both parties, it also raises questions about the long-term psychological well-being of the individuals involved. According to the National Institute of Mental Health , human-animal relationships can have both positive and negative effects on mental health, depending on the nature of the interaction and the boundaries established.

Research has shown that interacting with animals can have therapeutic benefits, such as reducing stress and anxiety. However, in the case of an unconventional relationship like the one between the dolphin and the woman, there may be unique challenges and potential negative consequences. It is essential to consider the ethical and psychological implications of such relationships, especially when they involve highly intelligent and emotionally complex animals like dolphins.

Another aspect to consider is the impact on social dynamics and the broader ecosystem. Interspecies relationships that deviate from natural behavior patterns can have ripple effects on the environment and other members of the animal species. The case of the dolphin and the woman raises questions about the ethical and ecological implications of disrupting natural social structures and behaviors.

Ultimately, the impact on health of interspecies relationships is a complex and multifaceted issue. While the story of the dolphin and the woman may be a rare and extraordinary example, it prompts us to consider the broader implications of such connections. As we continue to explore the boundaries of human-animal interactions, it is crucial to approach these relationships with caution, empathy, and a deep understanding of the potential health and psychological consequences.

The Psychological Aspect

Interspecies relationships have long fascinated researchers and psychologists due to the complex dynamics at play. The story of a dolphin falling in love with a human woman during a NASA experiment is a prime example of the psychological aspect of such connections.

Research has shown that animals, including dolphins, are capable of forming deep emotional bonds with humans. In fact, a study published in the National Center for Biotechnology Information found that dolphins have the capacity for complex emotions and social intelligence, making them highly receptive to forming connections with humans.

The bond that developed between the dolphin and the woman in the NASA experiment raises important questions about the psychological implications of interspecies relationships. It challenges traditional notions of love and attachment, and prompts us to reconsider the nature of emotional connections between different species.

Furthermore, this extraordinary connection sheds light on the potential health benefits of interspecies relationships. Studies have shown that interacting with animals can have a positive impact on mental health, reducing stress, anxiety, and depression. According to the World Health Organization , pets and other animals can provide companionship and support, leading to improved overall well-being.

However, it's important to approach interspecies relationships with caution and consideration for the well-being of both parties involved. The unique nature of such connections requires a deep understanding of animal behavior and psychology, as well as ethical considerations regarding the welfare of the animals.

In conclusion, the story of the dolphin and the woman in the NASA experiment offers a fascinating glimpse into the psychological aspect of interspecies relationships. It challenges our understanding of love and attachment, while also highlighting the potential health benefits of such connections. As researchers continue to explore the intricacies of interspecies relationships, it is essential to approach these connections with empathy, respect, and a commitment to the well-being of all involved.

The Ethical Considerations

When discussing the extraordinary connection that developed between a dolphin and a woman during a NASA experiment, it is crucial to examine the ethical considerations surrounding interspecies relationships. The story of Margaret Howe Lovatt and Peter the dolphin raises important questions about the boundaries of human-animal interactions and the potential impact on both parties involved.

One of the key ethical considerations is the concept of consent. In the case of Margaret and Peter, it is essential to consider whether the dolphin was able to provide informed consent for the experiment. While animals cannot communicate in the same way humans do, it is important to recognize their capacity for understanding and agency. The issue of consent in interspecies relationships is complex and requires careful examination.

Furthermore, the potential health and psychological implications of interspecies relationships must be taken into account. Research has shown that human-animal interactions can have a range of effects on both parties. For example, studies have demonstrated the positive impact of animal-assisted therapy on human mental health, including reduced anxiety and improved mood. However, it is also important to consider the potential risks and ethical implications of intimate relationships between humans and animals.

From a psychological perspective, interspecies relationships raise questions about the nature of attachment and emotional connections. The bond that developed between Margaret and Peter challenges traditional understandings of human-animal relationships and highlights the complexity of interspecies emotional connections. Understanding the psychological implications of such relationships is essential for ensuring the well-being of both humans and animals involved.

From an ethical standpoint, it is also important to consider the broader implications of interspecies relationships for animal welfare and conservation. While the case of Margaret and Peter is unique, it raises important questions about the impact of human intervention in the lives of animals. Ethical considerations surrounding interspecies relationships extend beyond individual interactions to encompass broader issues of animal rights and welfare.

Ultimately, the story of Margaret and Peter prompts a critical examination of the ethical considerations surrounding interspecies relationships. As we continue to explore the complex dynamics of human-animal interactions, it is essential to prioritize ethical decision-making and consider the broader implications for both humans and animals involved.

The Aftermath and Lessons Learned

After the conclusion of the NASA experiment, the aftermath of the extraordinary connection that developed between a dolphin and a woman raised numerous questions and sparked a wide range of emotions. The lessons learned from this unique interspecies relationship have shed light on the potential health and psychological implications of such connections.

One of the most striking aspects of the aftermath was the emotional impact on both the dolphin and the woman involved. The bond that formed between them was unlike anything previously observed, leading to a deep sense of attachment and mutual understanding. As a result, the separation at the end of the experiment was emotionally challenging for both parties. This sheds light on the deep emotional capacity of dolphins and raises important questions about the ethical implications of using animals in scientific experiments.

Furthermore, the aftermath of the experiment highlighted the potential for interspecies relationships to have a profound impact on the mental and emotional well-being of both humans and animals. Studies have shown that interactions with animals can have therapeutic benefits, leading to reduced stress, anxiety, and depression. In the case of the woman involved in the experiment, the bond with the dolphin provided a source of comfort and companionship that had a positive impact on her overall well-being.

However, the aftermath also revealed the complexities and challenges of navigating interspecies relationships. While the bond between the dolphin and the woman was undeniably powerful, it also raised important questions about the ethical and practical considerations of such connections. For example, the potential health risks associated with close contact between humans and animals, including the transmission of zoonotic diseases, must be carefully considered.

Ultimately, the aftermath of the NASA experiment has provided valuable lessons about the potential benefits and risks of interspecies relationships. It has highlighted the need for further research and ethical considerations in this area, as well as the importance of understanding and respecting the emotional capacity of animals. The bond that developed between the dolphin and the woman serves as a powerful reminder of the profound connections that can exist between different species, and the potential for mutual understanding and empathy.

Interspecies relationships are a fascinating topic, but it's important to approach them with a critical eye. The story of the extraordinary connection between a dolphin and a woman during a NASA experiment certainly captures the imagination, but it's crucial to consider the potential health and psychological implications with a balanced perspective.

While it's true that interacting with animals can have therapeutic benefits for humans, it's essential to remember that dolphins are wild animals with their own needs and behaviors. The idea of forming deep emotional connections with them during an experiment raises ethical questions about the well-being of the animals involved .

From a health standpoint, it's important to recognize that while animal-assisted therapy can be beneficial, it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. The potential for zoonotic diseases and physical risks associated with close contact with wild animals must be carefully considered.

Psychologically, the idea of forming an intense bond with an animal raises questions about the long-term implications for human relationships and mental health. It's crucial to approach these stories with a skeptical mindset and consider the broader context of interspecies interactions.

While the story of the dolphin and the woman is undoubtedly intriguing, it's essential to approach it with a critical understanding of the potential implications for both human and animal well-being.

Wow, that article sounds fascinating! I actually had a similar experience with a therapy dog during a difficult time in my life. The bond that developed between us was truly extraordinary and had a profound impact on my mental and emotional well-being.

Interspecies relationships, whether it's with a dolphin, dog, or any other animal, can have amazing health and psychological implications. The unconditional love and companionship they offer can reduce stress, anxiety, and even improve physical health.

It's incredible to think about the potential benefits of these connections, not just for individuals, but also for society as a whole. I'm definitely going to look more into this topic and see what other stories and research are out there!

Wow, the idea of an extraordinary connection between a dolphin and a woman during a NASA experiment is truly fascinating! I can't help but wonder about the potential health and psychological implications of such interspecies relationships. It's amazing to think about the ways in which interacting with animals, especially highly intelligent ones like dolphins, could impact our well-being.

It makes me curious about the specific details of the connection that developed between the dolphin and the woman. Did it have any measurable effects on her health or mental state? And what about the dolphin? How did it respond to the relationship? I'd love to learn more about the research and findings from this experiment.

Exploring the idea of interspecies relationships opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for understanding the human mind and body. I can't help but wonder if there are potential therapeutic benefits to be gained from interacting with animals in this way. It's definitely a topic that piques my curiosity and leaves me wanting to delve deeper into the potential implications for health and psychology.

Want to join the discussion? Please login or register to reply.

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Environment

Talking dolphins and the love story that wasn't.

By Lewis Dartnell

18 June 2014

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Margaret Howe had some success in teaching language to Peter the dolphin (Image: The John Lilly Estate)

The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins explores a 1960s project to teach a dolphin English, but its true significance has been buried in sexual innuendo

On the rocky coastline of St Thomas, a small island in the American Virgin Islands, squat the dilapidated ruins of a villa. Built in the 1960s by the eccentric neuroscientist John Lilly, this research station was once the site of one of the most ambitious experimental programmes in animal behaviour. Lilly hoped to teach dolphins to speak English.

Christopher Riley’s documentary The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins does a good job of explaining, in sober terms, why this idea isn’t as hopelessly crazy as it sounds. Researchers had been trying to teach chimpanzees sign language, and even spoken English, with limited success. Bottlenose dolphins are deeply social animals and seem to demonstrate a high level of intelligence in their behaviour. Indeed, we now suspect that in the wild, dolphins use signature whistles to identify each other; in other words, they have names .

When Lilly’s wife told him she had noticed lab dolphins imitating the tones of conversation between researchers, he reasoned that perhaps dolphins could be taught to not only understand human speech, but recreate words themselves through their blowholes.

Some of the funding for Lilly’s research came from NASA. Through the 1950s and 60s the agency, and radio astronomers in general, took increasingly seriously the possibility that there were other technological civilisations in our galaxy. If Lilly could establish communication with another animal species on Earth, lessons from his work might help humanity understand radio messages from extraterrestrial intelligent life.

With the arrival in St Thomas of a young and enthusiastic college dropout, Margaret Howe, the entire second floor of the villa was waterproofed and flooded so that human and dolphin could work together closely. Howe lived full time with a dolphin named Peter, and attempted to teach him English: hence the girl who talked to dolphins.

Howe had some early success, and was able to train Peter to make a recognisable attempt at approximating the sound and intonation of English words, repeating them back to her for fish treats. But for the funders, anxious to see progress from this expensive programme, few signs emerged that the dolphin actually comprehended what words signified or represented. Peter never constructed novel sequences of sounds to communicate his own intentionality.

Things didn’t improve. Lilly began taking LSD as a way of exploring his own mind, and even injected the hallucinogen into female captive dolphins to see how they responded. (They didn’t.) But the revelation that cast the greatest shadow over the credibility of the work was the nature of the relationship that developed between Howe and her experimental subject – a story revealed years later in Hustler magazine.

During the study period, as Peter matured, his sexual urges increasingly became a distraction. At first, the researchers arranged temporary visits to the enclosure with the two females, but as these visits became more frequent and disruptive to the language work, Howe began to relieve his desires manually herself.

By the summer of 1966, funding for the dolphin speech experiments had dried up. St Thomas dolphin house was shut down, and the three dolphins were relocated to a research lab in Florida. We are asked to imagine that Peter’s subsequent trials and miseries were the result of a broken heart. Howe stayed on and got married.

Underneath this tosh (and not to give too much away) there is a much tougher, more uncomfortable story not getting told at this point: about laboratory life, animal welfare and whether non-human animals should be accorded rights. The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins is not a love story, much as it might want to be one.

Riley’s documentary is undeniably fascinating, however. It is compellingly assembled from archive footage and, in places, cleverly and subtly reconstructed. Humans are not perfectly objective, investigative robots: you choose to study an area you are passionate about, you tend to favour one theory over another, and you care what the outcome is. Particularly in animal research, it can be difficult to avoid becoming attached to your subjects. The skill in successful science is to make sure these impulses don’t taint your methods and the results you get from them.

Lilly spent his last years arguing, with some success, for the release of captive dolphins. In the end, he felt he had had no right to experiment upon them.

Howe, now Howe Lovatt, feels differently. Her language experiments with Peter lasted only a few months before the plug was pulled. She wonders what we may yet discover about intelligence and language, if only we would learn a little patience.

The Girl Who talked to Dolphins was broadcast in the UK on BBC Four on 17 June 2014

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Margaret Howe Lovatt tried to teach Peter the dolphin how to speak English but their relationship progressed to a whole new level

12:53, 9 Jun 2014
Updated 11:22, 28 Sep 2016

A woman who had sex with a dolphin as part of a scientific study has spoken out for the first time.

During the swinging 60s, animal researcher Margaret Howe Lovatt was part of a Nasa-funded experiment on the US Virgin Islands to teach the intelligent sea creatures how to speak English.

In 1963 she helped turn a house into a domestic dolphinarium by flooding it with knee-deep water, where researchers could study the animals from their home.

It was there she met Peter, an adolescent dolphin she described as 'sexually coming of age'.

As the two bonded, their relationship soon progressed to a more physical level.

Margaret said: "Peter liked to be... with me. He would rub himself on my knee, my foot or my hand and I allowed that.

"I wasn't uncomfortable - as long as it wasn't too rough. In the beginning I would put him on the elevator and say you go play with the girls for a day.

"It was just easier to incorporate that and let it happen, it was very precious and very gentle, Peter was right there, he knew that I was right there."

Margaret claims this became a regular part of her studies, as she tried to teach Peter to speak English.

She added: "It was sexual on his part - it was not sexual on mine, sensuous perhaps.

"It would just become part of what was going on like an itch, just get rid of that we'll scratch and we would be done and move on.

"I was there to get to know Peter, that was part of Peter."

But what started with Sixties idealism would spiral into the darkness of the decade.

The experiment would end in tragedy, and for years after there would be rumours of the dolphins suffering drug abuse with LSD tests and scandal over the nature of Margaret’s relationship with Peter.

Margaret said: “I’ve had a good bunch of letters from people asking if they could interview me, but I’ve not done any of it."

A new BBC documentary The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins will be screened at the Sheffield Documentary Festival on Wednesday, June 11, before making its way to BBC4 on Tuesday, June 17.

Surprisingly it's not the first time a human has forged a sexual relationship with a dolphin.

Malcolm Brenner, 63, had a six-month sexual relationship with 'Dolly' the dolphin at an amusement park in Florida in 1971.

He told how the female mammal 'came on' to him while he was in the pool with her.

They then waited until the water park had closed for the day and her male companion had been put away before getting it on.

Read the full story here.

* 5 surprising facts about dolphin sex from their love of eels to bisexual tendencies

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‘i had a sexual relationship with a dolphin’.

He flipped for her — and died of a broken heart.

Peter the Dolphin was just 6 years old when he fell in love — with a human. The bottlenose dolphin met research assistant Margaret Howe just as the free love movement was emerging in 1965.

Howe was supposed to spend 10 weeks teaching Peter English words, but Peter was more focused on getting to know his teacher in a different way.

As he was “sexually coming of age,” Howe said, Peter turned hot for his teacher, and fell in love. Howe and Peter’s star-crossed love story is the focus of a new BBC documentary, “The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins,” set to air next week, according to the Daily Mail .

Howe and Peter did everything together — eating, sleeping, bathing and playing — as part of a NASA experiment that aimed to teach Peter to speak through his blowhole.

The experiment, which plays out like a real-life version of the famous 1973 film “Day of the Dolphin,” had a unique set-up. Dr. John C. Lilly, the experiment’s leader, flooded a sun-drenched remote location in St. Thomas with seawater 22 inches deep. Howe had a desk suspended from the ceiling and a hanging mattress protected by a shower curtain, which Peter loved to splash water at for attention.

Howe’s lessons started immediately, but Peter quickly proved to be a bad boy. She tried hard to get Peter to greet her in the morning by saying, “Hello Margaret,” but he had trouble with the letter “M.” Instead, Peter had something else to greet her with.

About four weeks into the experiment, Howe wrote in her diary: “Peter has become sexually aroused several times during the week.”

“I find that his desires are hindering our relationship,” she wrote. “He jams himself again and again against my legs, circles around me, is inclined to nibble and is generally so excited he cannot control his attitude around me.”

Peter may not have been the only one smitten, though. “That relationship of having to be together sort of turned into really enjoying being together, and wanting to be together, and missing him when he wasn’t there,” Howe admitted.

“I did have a very close encounter with — I can’t even say ‘a dolphin’ again — Peter.”

In the trailer for the documentary, Howe explains that she would masturbate Peter to keep him focused, otherwise he did not pay attention to her lessons.

“It was just easier to incorporate that and let it happen. It was very precious, it was very gentle. Peter knew I was right there, Peter was right there … again it was sexual on his part, it was not sexual on mine — sensuous perhaps,” she said.

“It would just become part of what was going on, like an itch, just get rid of that, scratch it and we’ll be done and move on.”

After the experiment ended and the lab was closed, Peter was shipped back to Lilly’s lab in Miami and his health quickly deteriorated.

A few weeks later, Peter committed suicide, with veterinarian Andy Williamson ruling his cause of death a broken heart.

“Margaret could rationalize it, but when she left, could Peter?” Williamson said. “Here’s the love of his life gone.”

Repeating Islands

News and commentary on caribbean culture, literature, and the arts, the dolphin who loved me.

Margaret Lovatt at the Dolphin House on St Thomas

In the 1960s, Margaret Lovatt was part of a Nasa-funded project to communicate with dolphins. Soon she was living with ‘Peter’ 24 hours a day in a converted house. Christopher Riley reports for London’s Guardian on an experiment that went tragically wrong. Here is an excerpt. For the full report and a gallery of photos follow the link below.

Like most children, Margaret Howe Lovatt grew up with stories of talking animals. “There was this book that my mother gave to me called Miss Kelly,” she remembers with a twinkle in her eye. “It was a story about a cat who could talk and understand humans and it just stuck with me that maybe there is this possibility.”

Unlike most children, Lovatt didn’t leave these tales of talking animals behind her as she grew up. In her early 20s, living on the Caribbean island of St Thomas, they took on a new significance. During Christmas 1963, her brother-in-law mentioned a secret laboratory at the eastern end of the island where they were working with dolphins. She decided to pay the lab a visit early the following year. “I was curious,” Lovatt recalls. “I drove out there, down a muddy hill, and at the bottom was a cliff with a big white building.”

Lovatt was met by a tall man with tousled hair, wearing an open shirt and smoking a cigarette. His name was Gregory Bateson, a great intellectual of the 20th century and the director of the lab. “Why did you come here?” he asked Lovatt.

“Well, I heard you had dolphins,” she replied, “and I thought I’d come and see if there was anything I could do or any way I could help…” Unused to unannounced visitors and impressed by her bravado, Bateson invited her to meet the animals and asked her to watch them for a while and write down what she saw. Despite her lack of scientific training, Lovatt turned out to be an intuitive observer of animal behaviour and Bateson told her she could come back whenever she wanted.

“There were three dolphins,” remembers Lovatt. “Peter, Pamela and Sissy. Sissy was the biggest. Pushy, loud, she sort of ran the show. Pamela was very shy and fearful. And Peter was a young guy. He was sexually coming of age and a bit naughty.”

The lab’s upper floors overhung a sea pool that housed the animals. It was cleaned by the tide through openings at each end. The facility had been designed to bring humans and dolphins into closer proximity and was the brainchild of an American neuroscientist, Dr John Lilly. Here, Lilly hoped to commune with the creatures, nurturing their ability to make human-like sounds through their blow holes.

Lilly had been interested in connecting with cetaceans since coming face to face with a beached pilot whale on the coast near his home in Massachusetts in 1949. The young medic couldn’t quite believe the size of the animal’s brain – and began to imagine just how intelligent the creature must have been, explains Graham Burnett, professor of the history of science at Princeton and author of The Sounding of the Whale. “You are talking about a time in science when everybody’s thinking about a correlation between brain size and what the brain can do. And in this period, researchers were like: ‘Whoa… big brain huh… cool!'”

At every opportunity in the years that followed, John Lilly and his first wife, Mary, would charter sailboats and cruise the Caribbean, looking for other big-brained marine mammals to observe. It was on just such a trip in the late 1950s that the Lillys came across Marine Studios in Miami – the first place to keep the bottlenose dolphin in captivity.

Up until this time, fishermen on America’s east coast, who were in direct competition with dolphins for fish, had considered the animals vermin. “They were know as ‘herring hogs’ in most of the seafaring towns in the US,” says Burnett. But here, in the tanks of Marine Studios, the dolphins’ playful nature was endearingly on show and their ability to learn tricks quickly made it hard to dislike them.

Here, for the first time, Lilly had the chance to study the brains of live dolphins, mapping their cerebral cortex using fine probes, which he’d first developed for his work on the brains of rhesus monkeys. Unable to sedate dolphins, as they stop breathing under anaesthetic, the brain-mapping work wasn’t easy for either animals or scientists, and the research didn’t always end well for the marine mammals. But on one occasion in 1957, the research would take a different course which would change his and Mary’s lives for ever.

To continue reading go to http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/08/the-dolphin-who-loved-me

1960s Experiment: Woman Spent 10 Weeks Living Underwater With Dolphin

I spent weeks underwater with a dolphin - I loved it but there was a problem

A WOMAN who spent 10 weeks living in an underwater house with a dolphin has revealed the one major problem that caused her lots of stress.

In 1965, a young woman lived in isolation with a male dolphin in the name of science. It got weird

Margaret Howe’s diary is concerned with a new issue: Peter's 'sexual needs' are frustrating research. She decides to take matters into her own hands

This 1960s Love Story About This Woman And Dolphin Is "The Shape Of Water" In Real Life

And yeah, it got a little sensual.

The woman who lived (and had sex) with a dolphin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31AWe-FN7CA In 1964, Margaret Howe Lovatt, working with psychedelic dolphin researcher John Lilly, began to live with one of the animals full-time as part of a NASA-funded study about interspecies communication; a new documentary about Lovatt, titled "The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins," airs on BBC4 later this month. Above, a clip of Lovatt talking…

Margaret Howe Lovatt And Her Sexual Encounters With A Dolphin

In the 1960s, a NASA-funded experiment led to an intimate relationship between researcher Margaret Howe Lovatt and a dolphin named Peter.

The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong

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Human-on-dolphin sex is not really that weird

Margaret howe lovatt was attacked for admitting that she stimulated a dolphin. but what she did isn't that unusual, by tracy clark-flory.

It is safe to say that Margaret Howe Lovatt will from here on out be known as the woman who had “sex” with a dolphin.

This week, the media went nuts over revelations in a BBC documentary about Lovatt's interactions with a male dolphin during a NASA-funded experiment in the 1960s. “He would rub himself on my knee, my foot or my hand and I allowed that,” she said. "I wasn't uncomfortable, as long as it wasn't too rough. It was just easier to incorporate that and let it happen." Eventually, it became routine. "It would just become part of what was going on, like an itch, just get rid of that scratch and we would be done and move on,” she said. During the segment , a narrator intones, "Margaret felt the best way of focusing his mind back on the lessons was to relieve his desires herself, manually." She makes sure to clarify: "It was sexual on his part, it was not sexual on mine -- sensual perhaps."

Then came the headlines. "Woman reveals sex with dolphin." "The woman who lived in sin with a dolphin." "The dolphin who loved me." "This Woman Jerked Off A Dolphin -- And Liked It!" "Scientist Says Relationship With Dolphin Was 'Sensuous.'" "Woman waxes poetic about giving precious, sensual hand-jobs to a dolphin." "'I had a sexual relationship with a dolphin'" (despite the quotes, she never actually said that).

Judging from the collective horrified response, you would think that a human giving a handy to an animal was an aberrant, unthinkable act. But such fondling isn't unheard of in the realm of animal research.

There are two major published examples. The first: In 1970, anthropologist Francis Burton published "Sexual Climax in female Macaca mulatta." She wanted to answer the question of whether female monkeys experienced orgasm. Burton placed the primates in dog harnesses and cat collars to restrict their movement. Then the researcher put a “penis-simulator” into “the animal's vagina with vaseline as lubricant,” and moved it at a pace of two to five thrusts a second. Burton wasn’t able to definitively conclude that female monkeys could orgasm, but she did identify an excitement, plateau and resolution phase, as Masters and Johnson had identified in humans.

“I think in the field it is generally thought that a similar study would never get through an institutional animal use and care committee,” says Kim Wallen, a psychology professor at Emory University who specializes in primate sexual behavior.

The second case is that of psychologist Frank Beach and his research on beagles in the '80s. “Most of the work he did was behavioral, looking at the effects of prenatal androgens on sexual differentiation, but some of his treated animals were unable to copulate and he wanted to know if they showed normal genital reflexes, even though they did not copulate,” says Wallen. So, he masturbated the dogs and observed their responses.

There are more recent, although also less formal, examples. In Daniel Bergner’s “What Do Women Want?,” he details a demonstration made by a graduate student of researcher Jim Pfaus:

The student picked up a female rat and, with a tiny brush, stroked the clitoris, which protruded from the genitalia like a little eraser head. She stroked a few times, then put the animal back down in her cage. Swiftly the creature poked her nose out of the open door. She clamped her teeth on the white sleeve of the student’s lab coat and tugged the woman’s hand inside the cage. The student brushed the rat’s clitoris again, set her down again. And again the rodent bit into the sleeve, pulling, communicating unmistakably what she craved. This went on and on and on.

In the field of sex work, these are exceptional cases. Truth is, these hands-on techniques have a far more common, everyday application: the breeding of animals. How else do you think semen samples are collected? Manual stimulation is the most common way, according to "The Encyclopedia of Animal Science." Elephant semen is collected with the help of a hand shoved up their rear to stimulate their prostate. Should you wish to see it, there are YouTube videos available of a trainer at Sea World masturbating a killer whale's enormous pink schlong , a man getting handsy with an echidna's four-headed penis , a dog being jerked off by a prim-looking middle-aged woman -- and so many others. It's like the Noah's Ark of human-animal hand jobs. These cases don't make headlines -- but allowing a dolphin to hump your foot until he ejaculates does.

I asked Wallen why it's considered acceptable to manually stimulate animals in order to collect semen for breeding purposes when the same behavior is often forbidden in a research context. “It is strange, isn’t it, that masturbation for commerce is seen as normal and appropriate, but masturbation where its end point is sexual arousal is not,” said Wallen. Sex has an uncanny way of revealing the inconsistencies in our thinking. “I have always suspected that it reflects the odd feelings we have about sexual pleasure," says Wallen. "It is not pleasure in general, but specifically sexual pleasure.” It's an important distinction: We think nothing of scratching under a cat's chin while it purrs, of course, but look askance at a human stimulating a cat in heat. (Although -- surprise! -- there are videos of people doing that on YouTube too.) As Lovatt learned this week, sex is one arena where nuance is forbidden.

The Experiment That Shocked the World - With Woman And Dolphin

Last updated: Jun 5, 2023

The video by Thoughty2 discusses a controversial experiment funded by NASA in the 1960s, involving a woman living in a flat chair with a dolphin named Peter, and the use of drugs and interspecies sex, which ultimately ended up in a porn magazine.

The video discusses a controversial experiment funded by NASA in the 1960s that involved a woman living in a flat chair with a dolphin named Peter.

The experiment aimed to prove that dolphins were intelligent and capable of communicating with humans. However, the project took a bizarre turn when the woman began giving the dolphin sexual stimulation and injecting it with LSD.

The experiment ultimately failed, and the dolphin was returned to the wild.

The video also discusses the origins of the experiment and the scientist behind it, Dr. John Lilly, who believed that dolphins were intelligent creatures with cognitive abilities approaching those of humans.

NASA funded a controversial dolphin project in the 1960s involving interspecies sex, drugs, and a woman living with a dolphin named Peter.
The experiment aimed to teach Peter to speak English by rewarding him with sexual gratification.
The experiment was widely criticized for its unethical treatment of animals and lack of scientific rigor.
John Lilly's groundbreaking idea of directly communicating with dolphins and NASA's funding of his project.
Margaret Howe Lovatt's arrival at the lab and her controversial role in the project.
The impact of Lilly's experiment on the scientific community and public perception of dolphins.
Peter's progress in learning English was limited, and he was simply mimicking sounds with limited understanding.
Drake's experiment tested whether dolphins could communicate complex ideas to one another through language alone.
Peter grew attached to Margaret and started rubbing himself up against her legs, leading to the experiment's publication in a porn magazine.

The Experiment That Shocked the World - YouTube

The Experiment That Shocked the World - with Dolphins 001

Introduction

NASA is a well-known brand that has had some mishaps in the past.
The dolphin project funded by NASA in the 1960s is one of the most absurd experiments in modern science.
The experiment involved interspecies sex, drugs, and a woman living in a flat chair with a dolphin named Peter.
The experiment ultimately ended up in a porn magazine.

The Experiment That Shocked the World - with Dolphins 002

Origins of the Experiment

The experiment was the brainchild of Dr. John Lilly, a rising star in the field of psychoanalysis and neuroscience.
Lilly was one of the first scientists to put serious effort into understanding animal intelligence.
He chose the bottlenose dolphin as his test subject because of their large and complex brains.
Dolphins have a brain to body weight ratio similar to that of our human ancestors from around 2 million years ago.
Lilly suspected that dolphins might be intelligent full stop with cognitive abilities approaching our own.

The Experiment That Shocked the World - with Dolphins 003

Startling Discovery

During a pioneering study into dolphin intelligence, Lilly's wife made a startling discovery.
She observed a dolphin mimicking the sounds of their voices, almost as though he wanted to join in the conversation.
Lilly was already convinced that dolphins were extremely intelligent, and this was his strongest proof yet.
Excited about the implications, he switched the focus of his research to studying dolphin intelligence specifically.
Lilly's early work largely concerned cats and dogs, but it soon became clear that if he wanted to find true intelligence in the animal kingdom, he was going to have to study creatures with brains as large and complex as our own.

The Experiment That Shocked the World - with Dolphins 005

The Controversial Experiment

The experiment involved a woman named Margaret Howe living in a flat chair with a dolphin named Peter.
The experiment involved injecting dolphins with LSD and other drugs.
The experiment was widely criticized for its unethical treatment of animals and its lack of scientific rigor.

The Experiment That Shocked the World - with Dolphins 006

The Radical Goal of Communicating with Dolphins

John Lilly's groundbreaking idea of directly communicating with dolphins
Lilly's book "Man and Dolphin" and his speculative visions for the future
Frank Drake's interest in Lilly's work and its relevance to his own search for intelligent life in space
NASA's funding of Lilly's project and the construction of Dolphin Point
The crack team of scientists assembled to work on direct human-dolphin communication

The Experiment That Shocked the World - with Dolphins 007

Margaret Howe Lovatt's Arrival at the Lab

Margaret Howe Lovatt's arrival at the lab on the Caribbean island of Saint Thomas
Her observations of the dolphins and insightful comments about their behavior
Lilly's offer of a job to Lovatt and her assignment to teach the dolphins to speak English
The physiological challenges of teaching dolphins to speak
The three dolphins at the Dolphin Point lab: Sis, Pamela, and Peter

The Experiment That Shocked the World - with Dolphins 009

The Controversial Role of Margaret Howe Lovatt

Lovatt's controversial role in the project: teaching the dolphins to speak English
The use of LSD and other drugs to facilitate communication with the dolphins
The intimate relationship that developed between Lovatt and Peter the dolphin
The publication of the story in a pornographic magazine
The ethical concerns raised by the experiment and its aftermath

The Experiment That Shocked the World - with Dolphins 010

The Legacy of John Lilly's Experiment

The impact of Lilly's experiment on the scientific community and public perception of dolphins
The ongoing debate over the ethics of using animals in scientific research
The continued search for intelligent life in the universe and the lessons learned from Lilly's work
The importance of considering the ethical implications of scientific research and experimentation
The need for responsible and ethical treatment of animals in all areas of scientific research

The Experiment That Shocked the World - with Dolphins 011

Peter's Lessons

Peter was untrained by humans, making him a blank slate.
He was able to imitate Margaret's speech patterns and inflections.
His progress was promising, but his ability to use English or form recognizable words was going nowhere.
NASA sent Carl Sagan to see how their money was being spent.
Sagan believed Peter was simply mimicking sounds with limited understanding.

The Experiment That Shocked the World - with Dolphins 012

The Dolphin-Human Flat Chair

Margaret wanted to bridge the gap between man and dolphin.
The first floor of the lab was waterproofed and flooded with seawater.
Unusual furniture was installed, including a desk hanging from the ceiling and a bed on a raised platform.
Margaret lived with Peter 24/7 for six months.
Peter's progress slowed down, and NASA attempted to realign the focus of Lily's work.

The Experiment That Shocked the World - with Dolphins 014

Drake's Experiment

Drake came up with an experiment to test whether dolphins could communicate complex ideas to one another through language alone.
Two dolphins were separated so they could hear each other but not see each other.
One dolphin was shown how to obtain food by following a seemingly random set of instructions.
If the second dolphin started following the same procedure, it would demonstrate advanced communication capabilities.
Lily continued Margaret's lessons with Peter to open up a genuine line of communication with a non-human species.

The Experiment That Shocked the World - with Dolphins 015

Peter's Sexual Needs

Peter grew extremely attached to Margaret and started rubbing himself up against her legs.
Margaret initially gave Peter time with the two female dolphins in the pool below.
Transferring Peter between the lab and the pool was a tricky process.
Margaret decided to take matters into her own hands and manually stimulated Peter to save time.

The Experiment

Peter the dolphin was part of a controversial experiment funded by NASA in the 1960s.
Margaret Howe lived in a flat chair with Peter and taught him to mimic her voice.
Dr. John Lilly, the lead researcher, wanted to teach Peter to speak English.
Drugs and interspecies sex were used in the experiment, which ultimately ended up in a porn magazine.
Peter fell in love with Margaret and never recovered from the heartbreak when she was taken away from him.

Drugs and Dolphins

Dr. John Lilly turned to LSD to bring together his interests in dolphins and mind-altering drugs.
He dosed both the dolphins and himself with LSD, but the dolphins showed no sign of being affected by the drug.
The experiment ended in tragedy, with several prominent members of the research team quitting and funding being cut short.
The dolphins were transported to a small lab in Miami, where they were kept in tiny chlorine-filled tanks with no natural light.

The Experiment That Shocked the World - with Dolphins 019

Peter's Fate

Peter and the other dolphins were transported to a small lab in Miami after the experiment ended.
Conditions in the lab were awful, with the dolphins kept in tiny chlorine-filled tanks that were too small to swim in.
A few weeks after his arrival in Miami, Peter sank to the bottom of the tank and refused to rise to the surface to take a breath.
Animal suicide is a controversial topic, but Peter's death was likely a result of his heartbreak and the terrible conditions in the lab.

The Experiment That Shocked the World - with Dolphins 020

The Aftermath

After the experiment ended, Margaret married the experiment's official photographer and they moved into the dolphin lab.
Peter's death was likely a result of his heartbreak and the terrible conditions in the lab.
The experiment was controversial and raised ethical questions about the treatment of animals in scientific research.

The Experiment That Shocked the World - with Dolphins 022

The Controversial NASA-Funded Dolphin Experiment

The experiment involved a woman living in a flat chair with a dolphin named Peter.
The experiment used drugs and interspecies sex, which ultimately ended up in a porn magazine.
The lab was never fully converted into a family home and remained partly flooded until they eventually moved out.
John Lilly, the scientist behind the experiment, fell pretty deep down the LSD Rabbit Hole and became more of a drug addict than a scientist.
Lilly mostly used his personal sensory deprivation tank to heighten his trips when taking drugs like LSD and kessemer.
The experiment was largely forgotten about after its conclusion until it appeared in an issue of Hustler in the late 1970s titled inter-species sex humans and dolphins.

Watch the video on YouTube: The Experiment That Shocked the World - YouTube

Woman reveals she had sex with dolphin during…

News World News

Woman reveals she had sex with dolphin during 1960s nasa experiment (video).

Margaret Howe Lovatt was stationed on the U.S. Virgin Islands as part of a NASA experiment to teach the intelligent mammals how to communicate.

She revealed in an upcoming BBC documentary that it was in 1963 when a house was flooded to turn it into a dolphinarium, allowing researchers to study the animals at close quarters, according to the Daily Mirror .

One of them, nicknamed Peter, was a sexually maturing adolescent.

“Peter liked to be … with me. He would rub himself on my knee, my foot or my hand and I allowed that,” she said .

“I wasn’t uncomfortable — as long as it wasn’t too rough. It was just easier to incorporate that and let it happen, it was very precious and very gentle, Peter was right there, he knew that I was right there.”

Lovatt claims the sex play became a regular part of her studies, adding , “It would just become part of what was going on, like an itch, just get rid of that scratch and we would be done and move on.”

The nature of their relationship caused a scandal and rumors grew about experiments of dolphins suffering drug abuse with LSD tests.

The BBC documentary “The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins” will be shown on BBC4 on Tuesday, June 17.

Sexual acts between dolphins and humans have a history.

American author Malcolm Brenner wrote a book called “Wet Goddess” based on his nine-month sexual relationship with a dolphin at Floridaland amusement park in the 1970.

Research by Dr. Mark Griffiths, of Nottingham Trent University, found there are a small number of “delphinophiles” — humans sexually attracted to dolphins.

Some studies have also found evidence that male dolphins are drawn to women because they give off similar pheromones to female dolphins.

ON A MOBILE DEVICE? CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO.

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Quadruple amputee Ellie Challis wins gold in women’s 50m backstroke amid more GB success

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Ellie Challis, the quadruple amputee with no hands or feet who was inspired to swim by a dolphin with a prosthetic tail, raced to her first Paralympic gold medal last night in the women’s S3 50m backstroke.

This was Great Britain’s 27th gold medal of these Games, with Louise Fiddes claiming another podium-topping moment soon afterwards in the women’s SB14 100m breaststroke final. Challis dominated, in a time of 53:56, almost five seconds ahead of Zoia Shchurova.

Challis, the 20 year old from Essex, who has become an ambassador for meningitis awareness, said: “I was very confident that I could do better than this morning and a PB was all I could ask for whether that got me first, second or third then that’s what it was. But wow that was a good swim.”

Having competed as a 17-year-old in Tokyo, she added: “Para sport is so different – we have people drop in and out of our classifications all the time and you never know what the year is going to hold. I went to the worlds in 2019 and since then I’ve just gone up and up and up.

A personal best and a British record swim. Ellie Challis is a Paralympic champion 🥇 #C4Paralympics | #ParalympicGames | #Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/PgUhiRsdF8 — C4 Paralympics (@C4Paralympics) September 2, 2024

“It’s been the most incredible day ever. I was so confident in myself but it’s a swimming race anything can happen. But wow that was fun. My family are just up there. I just want to say a big thank you to my dad, my sisters and my coach Aled as I couldn’t have done it without them.

“Since working with Aled two years ago I’ve improved so much. He gives me so much confidence in my swimming and I really couldn’t have done it without him, either at the worlds two years ago or today. I’ve got one day left and we’ll see what happens tomorrow but this is a full dream come true and tomorrow is just about enjoying every moment and taking it all in and whatever happens, happens.”

The life story of Challis is nothing short of inspirational. She was 16 months old when she contracted meningitis and was given a five percent chance of survival, resulting in the amputation of her four limbs. Aged 8, she began swimming at the Colchester Phoenix swimming club, motivated by watching a film about a dolphin named Winter, whose tail was amputated after getting caught in a crab trap. Nothing has held Challis back, including being a talented snowboarder, who dreams of becoming a baker. Perhaps The Great British Bake Off now awaits golden’ Challis.

Elsewhere, in boccia, Stephen McGuire defeated Colombian Edilson Chica Chica 8-5, in a sublime display in the gold medal match of the men’s individual BC4.

Jodie Grinham, seven months pregnant, and Nathan MacQueen took the gold in the Mixed Team Compound Archery, beating Iran 155-151, with two tens from the final two arrows.

Challis wins gold on another successful day for Great Britain: As it happened

08:41 pm bst, both brits out in heat two.

Disaster for Great Britain as both David Weir and Daniel Sidbury are knocked out. Weir finishes sixth and Sidbury seventh, meaning both miss out on the top five and will not be in the final with Nathan Maguire. Weir got trapped in a little bit and will be disappointed with his tactics in that race.

08:33 PM BST

Mckibbin through in table tennis.

The final game goes to Aaron McKibbin and he has beaten Slovakian Richard Csejtey 11-8 7-11 13-11 9-11 11-8 to book his place in the quarter-finals, which take place on Wednesday.

08:31 PM BST

Maguire through in men’s 1500m t54.

In heat one Great Britain’s Nathan Maguire finishes third and comfortably progresses through to the final. Six-time paralympic gold medalist Marcel Hug was at the back and in a spot of bother, but just managed to get into the final, finishing fifth in the final qualification process.

David Weir and Daniel Sidbury up in heat two.

08:23 PM BST

All to play for in the table tennis.

Aaron McKibbin was just one game away from victory but Slovakia’s Richard Czejtey has responded to win game four to take it to a deciding game.

08:20 PM BST

Men’s 1500m t54 round one.

David Weir goes for Great Britain in heat two alongside Daniel Sidbury. Nathan Maguire is in heat one, which gets under way in five minutes.

08:18 PM BST

Mckibbin in control.

After losing game two, Aaron McKibbin has bounced back to win game three to take a 2-1 lead. Win game four and he will book his place in the quarter-finals.

08:03 PM BST

Para table tennis.

Great Britain’s Aaron McKibbin is in action in the round of 16 against Slovakia’s Richard Csejtey. McKibbin is one game up.

07:59 PM BST

Wheelchair basketball.

Great Britain have made it three wins from three against hosts France, winning 85-50.

07:55 PM BST

Petrillo out.

Iran’s Hagar Safarzadeh Ghahderijani leads out from the front and takes the semi-final in 56.07. Venezuela’s Alejandra Paola Perez Lopez runs a personal best to come home in second. Valentina Petrillo finishes in third and will not make the final.

07:47 PM BST

Petrillo up next.

The world and paralympic record holder Omara Durand Elias wins the first semi-final comfortably in 54.77.

Valentina Petrillo is up in the second semi-final.

07:44 PM BST

Women’s 400m t12 semi-finals.

Two-time paralympic gold medalist Libby Clegg has said on Channel 4 that if she were competing in this event alongside Petrillo, she probably would not feel like it was a level playing field.

07:34 PM BST

Jk rowling on x.

Transgender athlete Valentina Petrillo is in semi-final two of the women’s 400m T12 semi-finals at 19.43 BST. JK Rowling, who is very vocal on the transgender topic, has expressed her view on Petrillo:

Why all the anger about the inspirational Petrillo? The cheat community has never had this kind of visibility! Out and proud cheats like Petrillo prove the era of cheat-shaming is over. What a role model! I say we give Lance Armstrong his medals back and move on. #Cheats #NoShame pic.twitter.com/bvqhs3DexI — J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 2, 2024

07:32 PM BST

Alfie hewett speaking after beating japan’s daisuke arai.

“Relief probably. I haven’t really played a lot against him in recent years so a little bit of a ‘learning on the job’ sort of match. He was taking my serve really early and punishing it so it put a lot of stress on me. I think I can give myself a lot of credit on how I coped with that. I saved four set points in that first set and was a lot more in control in the second so happy with that.”

07:29 PM BST

They have reached the end of quarter three over at Bercy Arena and Great Britain lead the hosts France 61-42.

07:23 PM BST

Jodie grinham and nathan macqueen speaking to channel 4 after their gold.

Nathan Macqueen:

“It’s pure relief. This is my third Games and I hadn’t medaled. We are both parents now and there is a lot of sacrifice being a high-performance athlete, being away from your children. They are the hardest bits but this has made it all worth it, I can give my wee boy a medal.”

Jodie Grinham:

“It has been eight years in the making. We have trained hard, we knew we could do it. We have been through it, we’ve supported each other and we’ve had amazing support from ArcheryGB and our coaches. We get the joy of being able to come out here and smash it together.”

07:19 PM BST

Jonnie peacock speaking to channel 4.

“I smashed the first bit, I’m so frustrated. I did exactly what I wanted to do to about 50m. It’s race practice. “I was proud of the 60m and I’m proud (Costa Rica’s Sherman Guity) Guity won. It’s frustrating but 2017 Jonnie would have wiped the floor with them. That’s the guy I need to find, he was there for about 50m today - but the last 40 I’m disappointed.”

On his preparation:

“It’s been a tough year. To be completely honest, for five years now I have struggled to find my form. This year the was the first I time found it again. “I don’t want to say it’s come to soon - I said that three years ago. This year it’s on me. We still have the relay - hopefully we’re not coming back empty handed.”

06:59 PM BST

Great Britain lead hosts France 37-27 at half-time as they look to make it three wins from three.

06:56 PM BST

Disappointment for shilton.

Over in the men’s singles table tennis Billy Shilton has been beaten by Thailand’s Phisit Wangphonphathanasiri 3-1. Aaron McKibbin is up later against Slovakia’s Richard Csejtey.

06:54 PM BST

Peacock misses out on medal.

He got a great start but faded as the race wore on. He finishes in fifth as Costa Rica’s Sherman Isidro Guity Guity takes the gold with a paralympic record of 10.65. Italy’s Maxcel Amo Manu takes silver, Germany’s Felix Strong the bronze.

06:50 PM BST

Men’s 100m t64 final.

Great Britain’s Jonnie Peacock goes in lane two. He won gold at London 2012 and Rio 2016 before taking bronze at Tokyo 2020. Can he add another medal to his collection?

06:43 PM BST

Gold for great britain.

They have done it! Jodie Grinham and Nathan MacQueen take the gold, beating Iran 155-151. What a way to do it with two tens from the final two arrows. Remember Grinham is seven months pregnant.

06:39 PM BST

Gb take small lead into final end.

Both teams experience some nerves during that end as Nori and MacQueen both register eights, Nori doing it twice. Great Britain therefore take a two-point lead into the final end as they lead 115-113. How are your nerves?

06:34 PM BST

Iran fight back.

Roles are reversed in the second end as Iran take it by the same margin as Great Britain won the first, meaning we are all square at 77-77 at the halfway stage.

06:32 PM BST

Great britain hit the front.

As you would expect in a final, it is tight but GB have edged in front after the first end 39-38 against Iran.

06:27 PM BST

Para archery final.

Jodie Grinham and Nathan MacQueen are going for gold against the Iranian pair of Fatemeh Hemmati and Hadi Nori. India beat Italy to take the bronze just a few moments ago.

06:20 PM BST

Gb in action.

Billy Shilton is under way against Thailand’s Phisit Wangphonphathanasiri in the last 16 of the men’s table tennis singles.

Great Britain are looking to make it three wins from three in the men’s wheelchair basketball as they take on the hosts France.

Coming up at 18.25 BST Great Britain go for gold in the mixed team archery against Iran.

06:10 PM BST

Busy period for great britain.

A number of events to keep an eye out for over the next hour, with Billy Shilton is the last 16 of the men’s table tennis singles, the wheelchair basketball team in action as well as two gold medal chances in the mixed team archery and men’s 100m T64 final.

06:00 PM BST

Still to come tonight.

Plenty of action to get stuck into this evening:

18:15- Para table tennis men’s singles last 16 featuring GB’s Billy Shilton

18:15- Wheelchair basketball preliminary round group A featuring Great Britain

18:25- Para Archery mixed team compound gold medal match featuring Great Britain

18:50- Athletics men’s 100m T64 final featuring GB’s Jonnie Peacock

19:45- Para table tennis men’s singles last 16 featuring GB’s Aaron McKibbin

20:10- Para badminton men’s singles gold medal match featuring GB’s Krysten Coombs

20:25- Athletics men’s 1500m T54 round one featuring GB’s David Weir, Nathan Maguire and Daniel Sidbury

05:49 PM BST

Gb into para archery final.

Jodie Grinham and Nathan MacQueen have delivered a clinical performance to beat Italy to reach the mixed team compound open final, guaranteeing Great Britain a medal. They score a perfect 40 points in the final end to win 156-149, meaning they dropped just four points in the whole contest. They will take on Iran for the gold at around 18.25 BST.

05:38 PM BST

Ellie challis speaking to channel 4.

“That was a good swim. Para sport is so different. We have people dropping in and out of our classifications all the time. I went to the Worlds and since then I’ve gone up and up. “I have been so confident in myself - that was fun. I’ve improved so much. I’ve still have got one more day but this is a dream come true and what happens, happens.”

Para Archery

The Great Britain duo of Jodie Grinham and Nathan MacQueen are taking on the Italian pair of Eleonora Sarti and Matteo Bonacina in the semi-finals. GB lead 38-37 after the first of four ends. Iran have beaten India in the first semi-final.

05:35 PM BST

Hewett wins.

There it is! He was in some strife in the first set but Alfie Hewett has proven why he is world number one and won so many Grand Slams. He closes out the second set to beat Japan’s Daisuke Arai 7-5 6-2 to progress through to the next round.

05:31 PM BST

Hewett closing in.

Over at the Court Suzanne-Lenglen Alfie Hewett is serving for the match. Having won the first set 7-5, he is currently 5-2 up in the second against Japan’s Daisuke Arai.

05:25 PM BST

Gold for fiddes.

Fiddes does it! What an amazing swim to secure Great Britain’s 28th gold medal. She reaches the turn in second and manages to beat the Brazilian Borges Carneiro twins. Fiddes wins the gold in a time of 1:15.47, 0.55 seconds clear of Debora Borges Carneiro, who finished just ahead of her twin sister Beatriz.

05:22 PM BST

Women’s sb14 100m breaststroke final.

Great Britain’s final medal hopes in the pool this evening with both Louise Fiddes and Olivia Newman-Baronius in action, in lanes six and eight respectively. SB14 is for swimmers with an intellectual disability.

05:18 PM BST

Stewart misses out on medal.

No medal for Great Britain as he finishes fifth. Canada’s Nicholas Bennett takes the gold as Australia’s Jake Michel wins silver. The defending champion and world record holder Naohide Yamaguchi has to settle for a bronze as he tired up on the second 50.

05:15 PM BST

Men’s sb14 100m breaststroke final.

Harry Stewart is up for Great Britain in lane two. Can he get a medal like Ellie Challis has just done?

05:11 PM BST

Challis wins gold.

Talk about an emphatic performance in a final! Ellie Challis takes Great Britain’s 27th gold medal in a time of 53:56, finishing nearly five seconds ahead of Zoia Shchurova. Spain’s Marta Fernandez Infante takes the bronze medal. Dominant from 20-year-old Challis.

05:08 PM BST

Para swimming.

Time to turn our attention to La Défense Arena as Great Britain go off in three finals in the next 15 minutes. First up is Ellie Challis in the women’s 50m backstroke final.

05:04 PM BST

Great britain through to semi-finals.

Jodie Grinham and Nathan MacQueen take a comfortable 150-141 win over Australia to advance to the semi-finals, joining Iran, India and Italy. Those semi-finals are coming up very shortly.

04:57 PM BST

Hewett takes first set.

Over at Court Suzanne-Lenglen after numerous break and set points, GB’s Alfie Hewett has found a way to win the first set 7-5. That is a monumental effort from Hewett after it looked on numerous ocassions like he was going to lose the first set.

04:56 PM BST

Gb in command.

Jodie Grinham and Nathan MacQueen have made a great start to their quarter-final against Australia. They lead 76-72 at the halfway stage.

04:48 PM BST

The action keeps coming as Great Britain are involved in the mixed team compound quarter-finals against Australia. GB’s Jodie Grinham, who is seven months pregnant, and Nathan MacQueen take on Australia’s Ameera Lee and Jonathon Milne.

04:46 PM BST

Wheelchair tennis.

Just as it looked like Alfie Hewett was about to lose the first set to Japan’s Daisuke Arai, who had three set points, he digs deep and wins the game to make it 5-5. How did he do that?

04:41 PM BST

Mcguire wins gold.

Great Britain take the gold medal after a terrific gold medal match performance from Stephen McGuire to beat Colombian Edilson Chica Chica 8-5. A sublime display when it mattered most. That is Great Britain’s 26th gold medal.

04:31 PM BST

Mcguire in command.

After plenty of mistakes from Chica Chica in the third end, Stephen McGuire takes advantage with a terrific penultimate end as he wins that third end 5-0 to take an emphatic 8-3 lead going into the final end. He has one hand on the gold medal.

04:22 PM BST

Chica chica bounces back.

Stephen McGuire may have taken the first end 3-0 but the Colombian has responded in emphatic style, winning the second end by the same score to bring the match level at 3-3 halfway through the match. Game well and truly back on.

04:11 PM BST

Advantage mcguire.

I do not think he could have dreamt of a better start in this gold medal match. He leads 3-0 after the first of four ends against Colombian Edilson Chica Chica after a clinical first end that nearly saw him take a 4-0 lead.

04:10 PM BST

World number one Alfie Hewett finds himself trailing 3-2 in the first set against Japan’s Daisuke Arai. Hewett has just ripped off some tape that was on his shoulder so is he struggling with a small injury? Time will tell.

03:59 PM BST

Stephen McGuire is going for gold against Colombia’s Edilson Chica Chica. Can he win Great Britain’s third gold of the day?

03:36 PM BST

At 16.00 BST, GB’s Stephen McGuire is in action in the gold medal match against Colombia’s Edilson Chica Chica in the men’s individual BC4. In boccia, one side has six red balls and the other six blue balls. The aim is to get your balls closer to the white target ball, the ‘jack’, than your opponent.

Here are the rules:

A match consists of a set number of ends, four in Individual and Pairs events and six in the Team game. Once all ends have been played the side with the highest score is the winner. Boccia is played indoor on a court similar in size to badminton. Players are positioned at one end in throwing boxes and can throw the jack anywhere on court over the ‘V’ line. The balls are made of leather and are filled with plastic granules so they do not bounce and are easy to grip.

The bronze medal went to Ukraine’s Artem Kolinko, who beat Croatia’s Davor Komar.

03:26 PM BST

World number one Alfie Hewett is just about to start his third round match against Japan’s Daisuke Arai on Court Suzanne-Lenglen. Hewitt, who has won 30 Grand Slam title across singles and doubles in his career, is ranked number one, with his opponent Arai number 16.

03:16 PM BST

Medals so far for great britain today.

Gold- Dave Ellis (Para Triathlon Men’s PTVI), Megan Richter (Para Triathlon Women’s PTS4)

Silver- Daniel Bethell (Para Badminton, Men’s Singles SL3), Claire Cashmore (Para Triathlon Women’s PTS5)

Bronze- Lauren Steadman (Para Triathlon Women’s PTS5), Hannah Moore (Para Triathlon Women’s PTS4)

03:10 PM BST

Women’s 1500m t54 round one.

There has been good news for Great Britain’s Eden Rainbow-Cooper, who has been advanced to the next round by the referee after being impeded during the race. She joins Melanie Woods and Samantha Kinghorn in the final.

02:54 PM BST

Medal ceremony in the women’s pts4 para triathlon, 02:48 pm bst, upcoming events.

Here are some of the events to keep an eye out for in the next few hours from Great Britain (all times BST):

16:00- Boccia BC4 Gold Medal Match featuring GB’s Stephen McGuire

16:50- Para Archery Mixed Team Compound Open Quarter-Final featuring GB

17:05- Women’s 50m Backstroke S3 Final featuring GB’s Ellie Challis

17:13- Men’s 100m Backstroke SB14 Final featuring GB’s Harry Stewart

17:19- Women’s 100m Breaststroke SB14 Final featuring GB’s Olivia Newman-Baronius and Louise Fiddes

01:59 PM BST

Great britain beaten by australia in wheelchair rugby.

The hooter sounds at the Champ-de-Mars Arena and Australia secure 50-48 victory over Great Britain in the bronze medal match.

It was a close and fiery game, with Great Britain – of course the defending champions from Tokyo going home empty handed.

01:54 PM BST

Gareth catches up with paralympic champion richter.

Shock gold of the triathlon, and maybe of the Games for GB with Megan Richter, 23, who has been a Paralympian for 10 years, winning gold on debut in triathlon in the womens’ PTS4 event. “I am truly shocked,” she told me. “It really is a dream come true. It’s all I dreamt of since being a little girl. I was inspired by people like Ellie Simmonds.”

On to LA, she says, and likes the sound of defending Paralympic champion under the Hollywood sign. Brilliant day for GB here – two gold, one silver, two bronze medals.

01:51 PM BST

Wheelchair rugby update.

Australia are closing in on a bronze medal at the Champ-de-Mars Arena after moving two tries ahead of Great Britain.

01:47 PM BST

Reaction from megan richter who won gold in the women’s pts4 triathlon.

I can’t believe that happened, I’m in complete shock. Hopefully it will sink in over the next few hours. I’ve worked so hard and so many people have put so much into this. I just want to say a massive thank you to so many people. My parents, my dad, who built my bike for me. My lovely boyfriend for training with me. Everyone at the University of Birmingham who have supported me, my gym coach, everyone at British Triathlon and thank you to everyone who has helped me get here. I had a plan to go quick on the run and that’s what I did. It was so hot, I could feel my legs starting to go but I knew I needed to get to the end. I was out with a stress fracture last year but I went all in, full time this year and races started going well. Things just came together and I’m so happy, the timing has been perfect.

An incredible gold and bronze finish for @paralympicsgb in the para-triathlon! Bravo Megan Richter and Hannah Moore. 👏👏 #C4Paralympics | #ParalympicGames | #Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/i6WH9hvFxr — C4 Paralympics (@C4Paralympics) September 2, 2024

01:46 PM BST

Day five headlines so far.

It has been a busy morning for Paralympics GB at Paris 2024.

Para-triathlon gold medals for Dave Ellis and Megan Richter.

Lauren Steadman, Claire Cashmore and Hannah Moore also claim para-triathlon medals.

Daniel Bethell takes silver in badminton final after being unable to convert match point for gold.

01:43 PM BST

This one is so tight! Australia have just edged ahead 39-37 lead. Great Britain need to something impressive to turn this game around!

Are we going to see a fightback?

01:28 PM BST

Meanwhile, at the Champ-de-Mars Arena, Great Britain has just levelled the bronze medal match with Australia at 31-31.

01:18 PM BST

Claire cashmore and lauren steadman speak.

Steadman was unable to defend her PTS5 para-triathlon title from Tokyo but still got a podium spot by claiming bronze in Paris.

She finished one place behind GB compatriot and former schoolmate Cashmore.

Claire Cashmore:

I’m feeling pretty good. Quite emotion today to see my parents and hearing that Dave (Ellis, her partner) also won. I’m really happy.

Lauren Steadman:

It literally took everything I had to be her today. I know it is a bronze but it means as much as a gold because of what it took to get here. 19 months ago I wasn’t here. I stood down and I didn’t think I had it in me. It takes everything to be your best version and to fly the flag. I’m at my limit. I wasn’t sure I was going to finish.

I felt a lot of pressure in coming in this time. It means so much. That relief when you cross that finish line.

01:12 PM BST

Paralympicsgb’s dan bethell on ‘devastating’ loss in badminton final.

It feels devastating, I came here for that gold,” he said. “I got the silver in Tokyo and it was my ambition from the start to go one better but I just couldn’t get it over the line today. The main game plan was that discipline is everything. Half court singles is the marathon event of Paralympic para-badminton as there isn’t a lot of room to hit winning shots so that was the key thing. My coaches, credit to them, recognised that straight away and were telling me the whole way through but I couldn’t execute it the way I needed to. He added: “I never like losing, particularly in a Paralympics when I’ve already gone through losing a Paralympic final. But I’ve got to take some pride at getting through to the final as a lot of athletes dream of it and to get on that podium. But at the moment I’m just completely devastated that I’ll be on the second step.

01:10 PM BST

Gold medal for gb’s megan richter.

Another gold for Great Britain! Megan Richter delivers in the women’s PTS4 triathlon.

She gave everything on the course and finished with a time of 1:14:30.

Spain’s Marta Frances Gomez takes silver and GB’s Hannah Moore took a phenomenal bronze with 1:16:01.

01:07 PM BST

Great Britain and Australia are battling it out for the bronze medal at the Champ-de-Mars Arena.

The first period ended 11-11 between the two teams, with GB looking far more composed than in their semi-final contest with the United States yesterday.

At half-time – there is nothing to separate these two sides – with the score at 22-22.

12:52 PM BST

More triathlon medals for paralympicsgb.

Claire Cashmore took silver in the women’s PTS5 para-triathlon a short while ago. America’s Grace Norman was simply too strong and took gold in 1:04:40.

Taking the bronze medal, was fellow GB compatriot Lauren Steadman, who finished 50 seconds behind Cashmore.

The staggering photogenic nature of this course ... little wonder there are so many photographers at para triathlon.... More GB medals now - Lauren Steadman bronze and Claire Cashmore with silver in womens PTS5 event. pic.twitter.com/zolemlMCLP — Gareth A Davies (@GarethADaviesDT) September 2, 2024

12:44 PM BST

Gareth speaks with dave ellis and luke pollard.

Just spoken with GB’s Dave Ellis and his guide Luke Pollard, funny moment when Pollard said Ellis elbowed him in the face 40m into the swim.

They are both elated at the result, especially after the mechanical failure on the bike in Tokyo. “I’ve worked for 3 years on that bike making it bullet-proof,” explained Pollard, formerly in logistics in the RAF at Brize Norton. Good to see Penny Briscoe here celebrating more GB success.

12:40 PM BST

Silver medal for gb’s dan bethell.

What a thrilling match! Dan Bethwell was just one point away from gold in the SL3 badminton final but ended up losing to India’s Kumar Nitesh.

Nitesh claimed the deciding set 23-21 as he beat Bethell for the first time in his career. He had won the first set 21-14 but the Briton equalised by taking the second set 21-18.

There is still another chance for a first para-badminton gold medal, as Krysten Coombs goes in the final of the men’s SH6 singles.

An agonising defeat for Dan Bethell in the Men's SL3 Singles final, but he takes silver 🥈 We're all so proud of you, Dan 💙 #C4Paralympics | #ParalympicGames | #Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/cgImZZSDSe — C4 Paralympics (@C4Paralympics) September 2, 2024

12:32 PM BST

Dave ellis reacts after winning para-triathlon gold.

It’s absolutely unreal. Obviously Tokyo was the opposite [where his bike had a mechanical issue meaning he did not finish] but it’s been a tough couple of years so I’m so happy I had an awesome race today. You only get a couple of chances in your career to do a Paralympics which makes it a lot more nervous. You just want to do it on the day. But it also makes it so special when you pull it off. There’s a little bit of shock in the system. I don’t know when it will sink it. It will take a while.

12:31 PM BST

Wheelchair rugby underway.

After yesterday’s defeat to the USA in the semi-final, GB’s mixed wheelchair rugby team are back in action against Australia to claim a bronze medal.

12:12 PM BST

Dan bethell in action.

In the men’s singles SL3 final, Great Britain’s Dan Bethell forces a deciding game against Nitesh Kumar. He takes the second game 21-18 with a hat-trick of points. Well, the fightback is on from the Tokyo silver medallist.

Another gold incoming for ParalympicsGB?

12:03 PM BST

Gb’s dave ellis and luke pollard take gold.

Dave Ellis has buried the heartbreak of Tokyo to claim para triathlon gold at Paris 2024. Ellis had gone into Tokyo as the favourite but no one had accounted for a mechanical issue on the bike that saw him unable to finish the race.

But finally, the world, European and Commonwealth champion has finally claimed Paralympic gold in the men’s PTVI. Ellis and his guide Luke Pollard finished over a minute clear of silver medallist Thibaut Rigaudeau of Frenceh with another Frenchman, Antonie Perel, taking bronze.

11:54 AM BST

Kinghorn into the t54 1500m final.

ParalympicsGB Sammi Kinghorn speaking after qualifying for the women’s T54 1500m final:

It is very different for me and the first time I have raced 1500m on the big stage. There were a few times I was brushing arms with some other athletes, and I was like ‘this is very new’. I hoped the race would go smoothly and there would be a kick in the last 200m, and that’s exactly what I did. I feel good going into the final.

Kinghorn, who took silver in the T53 800m on Sunday, added:

I am feeling the five hours sleep in the bags of my eyes. I am glad I have got a full day to recover. I had to just put my medal down and lock it away. It’s a bit of shame I can’t go away and celebrate my first medal with my family, but I still have more medals to aim for.

11:53 AM BST

Gareth speaks to penny briscoe.

Just had catch up at triathlon w/ @pennybriscoe chef de mission for @ParalympicsGB here @Paralympics @Paris2024 Team performing on course to expectation of 100 to 140 medals but long-standing team leadee believes 12 gold medal day yesterday will not be matched any time soon pic.twitter.com/CPdcKfiSyZ — Gareth A Davies (@GarethADaviesDT) September 2, 2024

11:44 AM BST

Gb’s bethell loses first set.

Huge shock in the SL3 badminton as Dan Bethell loses the first set 14-21 to India’s Kumar Nitesh in the gold medal match. A flurry of points for the Indian after trailing 11-13 earlier. Bethell has been unstoppable at these Games so far, but finds himself in real trouble.

Can he find his form here to upgrade his Tokyo silver to gold in Paris?

The SL3 classification is for players with movement moderately affected one side of the body, both legs, or the absence of limbs. They play standing on a half-width court and have reduced court movement but full range of shots.

11:27 AM BST

Gb’s ellis and pollard take the lead....

Onto lap one on the bikes and GB’s Dave Ellis is leading the way, with Satoru Yoneoka having been deposed from the head of the race.

11:17 AM BST

Para triathlon update.

GB’s Dave Ellis and his guide Luke Pollard have completed the swim leg in 4th, some 18 seconds down on leader Satoru Yoneoka.

10:44 AM BST

Lauren parker achieves paralympic redemption.

Australia’s Lauren Parker has buried the pain of her Tokyo heartache, completing Paralympic redemption by sealing a gold medal in a dominant PTWC triathlon win.

Parker had to settle for silver in Japan three years ago after losing to American Kendall Gretsch by just one second.

Parker cruised through the opening leg of the triathlon, a 750m swim through the Seine, to establish an early lead of 52 seconds.

Gretsch moved up into second during the five-lap 20km hand cycle leg, gradually chasing down Parker across the Parisian cobbles.

However, Parker was in no mood to let up as she crossed Pont Alexandre III, bursting into tears as she crossed the finish line.

10:36 AM BST

Gareth catches up with gb’s urand.

Just chatted to Henry Urand who finished fourth – alas – in the Men’s PTS3 and was disappointed to finish outside the podium but made up from 8th position in the last leg of the three disciplines.

Loved the venue. “Didn’t mind the delay to the event, it actually helped me, and never thought I’d say I raced down the Champs Elysee in a Paralympics. Friends and family were here too. Swallowed a bit of Seine water, I’ve tasted worse, and it wasn’t bitty.”

Urand added: “As a Formula 1 fan I wouldn’t have minded if we had had the event in Monaco, given the delays, but the setting was amazing. The cobbles were hard work on the bike, but overall great learning experience. It’s on to Los Angeles and Brisbane for me now hopefully.”

10:26 AM BST

Heartbreak for gb.

Great Britain’s Henry Urand narrowly missed out on the podium in the men’s individual PTS3 triathlon this morning, finishing a minute behind bronze medallist Nico Van Der Burgt of the Netherlands.

The 21-year-old did para cycling at a national level before the making the switch to international para traithlons in 2023.

Daniel Molina of Spain won gold in 1:08.05 and Germany’s Max Gelhaar took silver in 1:08.05.

10:19 AM BST

Petrillo through to t12 400m semi-final.

The final heat in the women’s T12 400m is underway with the first openly transgender athlete Valentina Petrillo in action. The Italian sprinter started strongly out of the blocks but Alexandra Paola Perez of Venezeala closed in on Petrillo around the final bend.

Perez decimated the heat and cruised into the semi-final with a time 56.97. Meanwhile, Petrillo finished second in her heat and progressed as the sixth fastest runner, in time of 58.35, just outside of a season best.

The Italian has qualified for this evening’s semi-finals in the women’s 400m T12.

10:09 AM BST

Gareth on para-triathlon duty.

Para triathlon has never enjoyed such a backdrop. Finally after the unsavoury water in the River Seine, this Monday morning race with very good spectator attendance – and many bemused Parisians being held up crossing squares on the way to work...

I’ll be speaking to our GB athletes throughout here.

Here at this staggeringly picturesque para triathlon course... I will be counting our @ParalympicsGB athletes in and out of the event today... @Paralympics @Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/u8OzAccfyA — Gareth A Davies (@GarethADaviesDT) September 2, 2024

09:48 AM BST

Transgender athlete in action.

An Italian sprinter will be the first openly transgender athlete to compete at the Paralympics later today.

Valentina Petrillo, 50, who transitioned in 2019, is a visually impaired runner and competes in the T12 200m and 400m sprints.

The 51-year-old previously won 11 national titles in the men’s category and her participation has caused controversy

Petrillo says she has learnt to deal with “jealousy” and has “nothing to fear” after concerns about her inclusion were raised by fellow athletes, including rival T12 runner Katrin Mueller-Rottgardt.

“Honestly, I can’t wait to be in Paris and race on that beautiful purple track and in front of all that enthusiastic crowd,” Petrillo said. “I think there will be a lot more love for me than I can imagine.

“It’s only fair that each of us can express ourselves in our own gender. Sport should teach us the value of inclusion and this is fundamental for people’s happiness.”

09:41 AM BST

More medal chances produced in the swimming.

Ellie Challis coasts into the final of the S3 women’s 50m backstroke with an incredible time of 53.86.

Challis was Britian’s youngest medallist at the Tokyo Games when she won silver in the S3 50m backstroke aged 17 and she will hope to go one better in the final which takes place at 17:05 BST.

09:24 AM BST

Gb targeting medal glory in wheelchair rugby.

Great Britain’s men’s wheelchair rugby team will be targeting a bronze medal from 12.30pm as they face Australia.

GB lost to the USA in the semi-finals on Sunday, beaten 50-40. Australia lost to Japan 52-51 in a thrilling contest. The semi-final match up was a repeat of the bronze-medal match at Tokyo 2020 in which Japan triumphed 60-52.

09:14 AM BST

Para triathlon is underway.

Para triathlon has kicked off this morning after they were postponed by 24 hours because of poor water quality in the River Seine.

All 11 races had been due to take on Sunday but heavy rain in Paris caused water quality in the Seine to drop.

There will be about 120 athletes competing over a three-part course featuring a 750m swim in the River Seine and a 20km cycle down the famous Champ-Elysees, the Avenue Montaigne and Pont des Invalides. Athletes will then embark on a 5km run to the Quai d’Orsay before returning to Pont Alexandre.

Great Britain has 11 athletes competing across seven of the triathlon events at the Games. These include reigning PTS5 women’s champion Lauren Steadman, who looks to defend her title against team-mate Claire Cashmore.

Dave Ellis will look to finally win a Paralympic gold in the men’s PTVI, while Alison Peasgood will try to go one better in the women’s PTVI.

08:58 AM BST

One to watch: louise fiddes.

Fiddes will be targeting her second medal of the Paralympics – her first gold medal when she competes in the women’s SB14 100m breaststroke, an event in which she took silver in Tokyo 2020.

The 23-year-old has already earned bronze in the S14 200m freestyle and will be joined by GB compatriot Olivia Newman- Baronius as qualifying gets underway this morning ahead of the final which takes place in the evening.

08:44 AM BST

A look at the medal table.

Great Britain sit second in the table at the end of day four after a record breaking day at the Games. Great Britain celebrated their most successful day at the Paralympics this century with a 12 gold medals on a record-breaking super Sunday at Paris 2024.

Hannah Cockcroft won her fourth successive women’s T34 100m title to clinch GB’s first para-atheltics gold, ahead of team-mate Kare Adenegan before Sabrina Fortune produced a world record to win the women’s F20 shot put title at the Stade de France.

Three golds were won in the velodrome, as James Ball was victorious men’s B 1000m time trail gold, Sophie Urwin won in the women’s B 3000m individual pursuit, and there was open team sprint gold for Jody Cundy, Jaco van Gass and Kadeena Cox.

08:33 AM BST

What to watch on day five.

Here are some events to keep an eye out for on day five:

You can find our full rundown here .

Para swimming

5:05pm-5:27pm: women’s 50m backstroke, S3 final; and men’s and women’s 100m breaststroke, SB14 final

More medals up for grabs for Paralympics GB this evening, with Ellie Challis and Harry Stewart hoping to secure a place on the podium on the backstroke and breaststroke finals

Para athletics

7:44pm-8:15pm: women’s 400m, T12 round 1

Valentina Petrillo, the Paralympics’ first openly transgender runner, begins her Games campaign on Monday morning. Amid ongoing rows and controversy over her participation, there is sure to be interest in Petrillo’s first appearance on the track.

08:21 AM BST

Jonnie peacock will go for gold.

Good morning and welcome to today’s live coverage of the day five of the 2024 Paris Paralympic games. After a record-breaking day four of the Games in Paris, more British athletes will try and claim golds today, with Jonnie Peacock one of the several stars in action.

ParalympicsGB were able to celebrate 12 golds on Sunday, which was a new record for the most champions in a single day and bettered the previous high of nine in both Rio and Beijing.

Two-time Paralympic champion Peacock will go for gold in the men’s T64 100m final on Monday after he finished third in qualifying at the end of a joyful day four for Great Britain.

“I feel like I’m slowly getting there,” Peacock reflected, having claimed bronze in Tokyo three years ago.

“It is going to be a fight and I just have to try and get there.”

David Weir will also be in athletics action today in the men’s T54 1500m.

Meanwhile, it will be take two for Lauren Steadman after the triathlon was pushed back a day on Sunday due to more water quality issues in the river Seine.

Steadman will compete in the women’s PTS5 classification and aim to defend her 2020 Paralympics crown, but will have bronze medallist and ParalympicsGB compatriot Claire Cashmore for company.

The world, European and Commonwealth champion Dave Ellis will look to finally claim Paralympic gold in the men’s PTVI, while Rio 2016 silver medallist Alison Peasgood will try to go one better in the women’s PTVI.

There’s something for everyone today, with swimmer Louise Fiddes targeting gold in the S14 200m freestyle and more gold medal opportunities awaits ParalympicsGB in the badminton. Dan Bethell and Krysten Coombs will go for gold after they won their respective semi-finals.

Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 3 months with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.

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Case Report
Open access
Published: 02 September 2024

A case report of prolonged viral shedding of SARS-CoV-2 in a patient who receive ibrutinib for CLL therapy

Siyuan Ma 1 na1 ,
Dong Wei 2 , 3 na1 ,
Weiwei Hu 1 ,
Yi Zhang 1 ,
Xiaohua Chen 1 &
Jie Chen 1

BMC Infectious Diseases volume 24 , Article number: 895 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

Patients on B cell immunosuppressive treatments have been shown to have persistent infection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In this report, a woman treated with ibrutinib for chronic lymphocytic leukemia experienced more than 40 days of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection. Unexpectedly, her peripheral blood experiments showed a normal SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody level and a relatively elevated percentage of CD19 + B cells, while an obvious decrease in the percentages of NK cells, CD4 + T cells and CD8 + T cells. Further SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell analysis in this patient indicated a significant decrease in the percentage of SARS-CoV-2-specific IFN-γ, TNF-α or IL-2 producing CD4 + T or CD8 + T cells. Most notably, ten days after the cease of ibrutinib, the PCR for SARS-CoV-2 turned negative and the reduced proportions of peripheral CD4 + T cells and CD8 + T cells recovered. Our research predicted that the depleted B-cell function therapies may play considerable role in the development of long COVID-19 and the abnormal T-cell subset distribution might be the underlying mechanism.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

The duration of viral shedding of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is usually less than two weeks. Patients with hematological malignancies, especially chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) are often on therapeutic drugs that suppress the immune system, putting them at a particularly high risk for persistent viral replication or severe secondary infections when infected with SARS-CoV-2 [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. Ibrutinib is a potent Burton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor and has been used in different B cell malignancies, including CLL [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ]. It has aroused heated clinical and scientific debate about whether the CLL patients infected with COVID-19 should maintain or discontinue ibrutinib treatment. In this scenario, the scholars who advocated ibrutinib discontinuation believed that the immunosuppressive activity of ibrutinib might bear responsibility for viral persistence and exacerbate secondary infection in susceptible patients [ 8 , 9 , 10 ]. The decision to continue ibrutinib was supported by data suggesting that BTK inhibition might mitigate the cytokine storm which was associated with a series of complications, including lung injury, DIC, and myocardial complications [ 8 , 11 , 12 ].

Here, we describe a patient who developed persistent symptomatic COVID-19 infection for more than forty days. The patient had a past history of CLL for which she had been receiving ibrutinib monotherapy for two years prior to the onset of symptoms of COVID-19. Initially admitted to another hospital and during twenty-day treatment period, the patient was instructed to continue taking ibrutinib to prevent tumor recurrence. However, Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) from nasopharyngeal specimens remained positive results for SARS-CoV-2. Contrary to previous studies that indicated decreased B cell levels and IgG levels during ibrutinib exposure [ 13 , 14 ], this patient’s B cell counts and neutralizing antibody profiles for COVID-19 were comparable to those of convalescent patients. After creasing ibrutinib and receiving comprehensive treatment for approximately ten days, the SARS-CoV-2 PCR on the nasopharyngeal swab turned negative result. Specifically, we observed a notable recovery in the percentages of NK cells, CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells. Our findings suggest that impaired antiviral T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 may underlie viral persistence, and we discussed the scientific rationale for discontinuing ibrutinib in CLL patients with persistent COVID-19 infection.

Data were collected from electronic health records. The diagnosis of COVID-19 was confirmed through PCR analysis of nasopharyngeal swabs using the SARS-CoV-2 assay from Roche and the Cobas 6800/8800 system. Plasma samples were analyzed for SARS-CoV-2 IgG using pseudovirus neutralization assays as described previously [ 15 ]. To detect SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4 + and CD8 + T cells, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were isolated from blood, and 1 × 10 6 PBMCs were stimulated with SARS-CoV-2 S protein in 200 μl in 96-well U-bottom plates (Corning, PA, USA) in a 5% CO 2 incubator at 37 °C for 20 h. To assess antigen-specific intracellular cytokine levels, including TFN-α, IFN-γ and IL-2, GolgiStop (BD Bioscience) was added 14 h after SARS-CoV-2 S protein stimulation, and the obtained cells were stained for phenotypic lymphocyte markers.

A 68-year-old woman without SARS-CoV-2 vaccination developed symptoms including fever, progressive shortness of breath, and cough. On January 17, 2023 (day 8 of her illness), she sought medical attention at a local hospital. The patient had previously been diagnosed with CLL and had been receiving ibrutinib as a maintenance therapy for two years prior to the onset of her COVID-19 symptoms. A chest computed tomography (CT) was performed at the local hospital on January 19, 2023, revealed multiple ground glass nodules in bilateral lungs, which were characteristic findings of COVID-19. A nasopharyngeal specimen tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 via PCR assay, and her oxygen saturation levels of peripheral artery were below normal. During her hospitalization, she continued to receive ibrutinib for her CLL as well as a 7-day course of azvudine (5 mg/day). She was also administrated low doses of corticosteroids (specific details were not available), and medications to alleviate cough, phlegm and asthma. Despite these treatments, her body temperature continued to fluctuated, and her respiratory symptoms progressively worsened. Remarkably, a follow-up chest CT scan on February 5 showed significant progression with bilateral diffuse ground glass opacities. Additionally, a new nodular lesion was identified in the upper lobe of the right lung. Subsequently, the patient was discharged from the local hospital on February 10 (day 32 of her illness) and transferred to our hospital on February 17 for further treatment.

A nasopharyngeal swab performed on February 17 continued to yield positive results by RT-PCR, with detection of the ORF1ab gene (Ct 28.51) and the N gene (Ct 23.10). Blood tests showed moderate leukocytopenia and thrombocytopenia (3.0*10^9/L and 82.0*10^9/L, respectively), lymphopenia(0.6*10^9/L), elevated levels of CRP (93.30 mg/L), interleukin-6 (11.7 pg/ml), and ferritin (1733.00 ng/ml), as well as significant hypogammaglobulinemia for IgA, IgG, IgM and IgE (0.268 g/l, 4.67 g/l, 0.182 g/l and < 19.4 IU/ml, respectively). The peripheral blood flow cytometry revealed a reduction in NK cells (7.16%), CD4 + T cells (17.71%), and CD8 + T cells (12.65%), though the CD4 + /CD8 + cell ratio was within normal range (1.4). Unexpectedly, the percentage of CD19 + B cells did not decrease (54.32%). Notably, serological testing showed that the levels of neutralizing antibodies in this patient for multiple Omicron variants were detectable and very high (Table 1 ), aligning with prior evidence of no significant decline in CD19 + B cell percentages. As seen in Table 2 , Table 3 and Table S1, after stimulated with the S protein of omicron or wild-type strain, we observed deficiency in naïve T cells and B cells, no significant differences in the proportion of T effector cells (Teff) or CD4 + , CD8 + effector memory T cells (Tem) and plasma cells between our patient and healthy controls who received two doses of the inactivated vaccine [ 15 ]. However, the percentage of SARS-CoV-2-specific IFN-γ-producing CD4 + T or CD8 + T cells was lower in our patient. All microbiologic tests for other respiratory pathogens showed negative results. The (1/3)-β-D-glucan test, GM test, latex agglutination test and the interferon-gamma release assay for tuberculosis were all negative. The levels of procalcitonin were normal and the blood culture was negative for fungus, bacteria, and anaerobes. At admission, treatment with dexamethasone was initiated, followed by a prolonged tapering corticosteroid regimen. Meanwhile, a second course of antiviral treatment (molnupiravir; 800 mg, twice a day, for 5 days) and intravenous piperacillin-tazobactam were administered. She also received supportive and symptomatic treatments including intravenous immunoglobulin, low-molecular-weight heparin, leucogen and ambroxol hydrochloride tablets (Table 4 ). After an interdisciplinary discussion with hematologist, the patient was asked to cease ibrutinib on the second day of her admission. The enhanced chest CT examination on February 20 showed bilateral diffuse ground glass opacities and the lesions in the dorsal segment of the left lower lobe trended towards consolidation. A lump was identified in the upper lobe of the right lung, with a diameter of about 3.2 cm and obvious enhancement at the edge. Burr-like changes and pleural traction were seen at lower edge of the lump (Fig. 1 ). For this reason, we consulted an interventional radiologist for their opinion about whether it was necessary to perform a puncture examination on the lump and were advised to strengthen the anti-infection therapy first. Therefore, Piperacillin-Tazobactam was replaced with imipenem on the fifth day of hospitalization. The SARS-CoV-2 RNA became undetectable on February 24 (the 8th day of her admission, 43 days after her initial symptoms), and remained negative on February 28. The follow-up peripheral blood flow cytometry on February 28 revealed a recovered NK cells (14.19%), CD4 + T cells (29.74%), CD8 + T cells (45.09%), and an inversion of the ratio of CD4 + /CD8 + cells (0.81). Significantly, the percentage of CD19 + B cells returned to 9.71%. The neutralizing antibody levels for SARS-CoV-2 detected in the repeated serologic test on February 28 are comparable to those on February 18 (Table 1 ). After about 10 days of treatment including the anti-infection therapy (Imipenem and Cilastatin Sodium, 1 g, iv, every 8 h a day), intravenous immunoglobulin (5 g, ivgtt, once a day), glucocorticoid (Dexamethasone, 3 mg, iv, once a day, for three days, then switch to prednisone acetate; 15 mg, po, once a day, tapering by 1 tablet every 3 days), low-molecular-weight heparin (4000 IU, ih, once a day) and ambroxol hydrochloride tablets (30 mg, po, three times a day), multiple indicators significantly improved in blood tests (Table 4). A follow-up CT scan on March 1 showed a resolution of bilateral inflammation. Moreover, the solid lesions in the upper lobe of the right lung transformed into air space opacities with gas-fluid levels (Fig. 1 ). Her general condition continued to improve, and she was finally discharged to home on March 2 (day 49) of her illness. Since then, the patient has been well without recurrence of symptoms and the PCR for SARS-CoV-2 remains to be negative. One month later, she became able to resume maintenance treatment with ibrutinib for CLL. Nowadays, the patient has been able to restart her active lifestyle.

Radiological characteristics on chest CT. A Enhanced chest CT images taken on February 20 revealed diffuse ground glass opacities in both lungs and partial consolidation in the dorsal segment of the left lower lobe. A nodular lesion of about 3.2 cm was found in the upper lobe of the right lung(red arrow). Left: images of the lung window; Right: images of the mediastinal window. B Follow-up enhanced chest CT was performed on March 1, indicating that the opacities were gradually resolving, and the solid lesions in the upper lobe of the right lung had shrunk to 2.8 cm and turned into air space opacities with fluid accumulation (red arrow). Left: images of the lung window; Right: images of the mediastinal window

The viral shedding of SARS-CoV-2 from upper respiratory specimens declines after initiation of symptoms and turned negative around 10 days after infection [ 2 ]. However, immunocompromised population, especially patients with hematologic malignancies have been reportedly shed the active virus for longer periods [ 16 , 17 ]. We described a case of a hematologic patient on ibrutinib monotherapy who experienced persistent COVID-19 infection. We ruled out reinfection or viral evolution, as all nasopharyngeal samples showed Ct values below 30 when SARS-CoV-2 RNA was positive, and neutralizing antibody levels mirrored changes in viral RNA clearance. Our investigation then focused on the patient's humoral and cellular immunity, revealing that despite a deficiency in naïve B cells, the patient exhibited levels of plasma cells and neutralizing antibodies comparable to those in recovered patients with similar disease courses. We also noted a temporary decrease in peripheral CD4 + and CD8 + T cells, which returned to normal after cessation of ibrutinib. Additionally, our patient showed reduced production of IL-2, IFN-γ and TNF-α in SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4 + and CD8 + T cells, indicating impaired T response.

The immunologic factors associated with chronic SARS-CoV-2 infection, such as CD4 + lymphopenia and B-cell aplasia, are distinct from those observed in acute severe COVID-19 infection. Hao et al. studied 104 COVID-19 patients and reported that decreased T cells and B cells were linked to prolonged viral shedding of SARS-CoV-2 [ 18 ]. Initially, we assessed our patient's neutralizing antibody profiles to explore whether ibrutinib, which can potentially impair humoral immunity, might influence the magnitude and duration of viral RNA shedding. The results showed that despite the patient's deficiency in naïve B cells, their levels of neutralizing antibodies against COVID-19 and plasma cell counts were normal. There is limited data on how BTKi affect neutralizing antibody levels in hematologic disorder patients post COVID-19 infection, but studies have shown increased Spike-IgG levels in serum after five COVID-19 vaccine doses in some ibrutinib-treated patients [ 19 ]. This variability may arise from patient heterogeneity or immune reconstitution, as Sun noted partial restoration of normal B cells and humoral immunity in CLL patients treated with ibrutinib [ 13 ]. Another possible reason for our patient’s high Spike-IgG levels could be that sampling for neutralizing antibody detection was performed one month after the initial onset of symptoms, a period was sufficient for activating humoral immunity and generating neutralizing antibodies. Furthermore, Ibrutinib significantly impacted the production of naïve B cells in this patient, while memory B cells and plasma cells were less affected.

Given the abnormal T-cell subset distribution and function reported in CLL [ 18 ], an alternative explanation for prolonged viral shedding in our patient could be an impaired antiviral T-cell response to SARS-CoV-2. We observed a decreased proportion of peripheral CD4 + and CD8 + T cells and a poor T-cell response to SARS-CoV-2 in our patient. These findings align with other studies that have indicated impaired T-cell responses in some patients with severe symptoms or poor viral control early in the disease course [ 20 , 21 ]. The compromised T-cell response in our patient's peripheral blood may be attributed to the tumor clone, which can disrupt T-cell subgroup balance and impair T-cell-mediated immune responses, or to ibrutinib reducing granzyme and IFNγ in CD8 + T cells [ 19 ]. This latter possibility is supported by the observed recovery of CD4 + and CD8 + T cells following cessation of ibrutinib. Further studies are necessary to confirm or differentiate between these potential causes of persistent viral shedding in more COVID-19 cases.

Many studies have reported persistent COVID-19 infection in patients with undergoing B-cell depletion therapy for hematologic malignancies, which can result in humoral defects [ 22 , 23 , 24 ]. However, our findings point to immune dysregulation characterized by impaired T cell responses as a causal factor in the development of long COVID-19 and developed infection lesions in the lungs. This also raises the controversy of whether ibrutinib therapy has an impact on the disease course and outcome in SARS-CoV-2 infected patients. We suggest that for such patients, it may be advisable to consider continuing BTKi therapy to manage underlying conditions only after controlling viral, bacterial, fungal, or other pathogenic infections. However, there are some contrary reports suggesting that BTKi can suppress excessive inflammatory responses and reduce the risk of severe infections of COVID-19 [ 8 ]. Hence, personalized treatment is essential for different patients. Future studies should aim to elucidate the immunologic defects associated with this clinical phenomenon, beyond the risk identified in our report related to BTKi treatment. Meanwhile, resuming antiviral treatment in immunocompromised patients with prolonged COVID-19 viral shedding should also be considered as a favorable factor for patient’s recovery. Taken together, our results seem to support the prognostic values of monitoring SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies and analyzing SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells in patients receiving ibrutinib for CLL therapy.

Availability of data and materials

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files.

Data availability

Data is provided within the manuscript or supplementary information files.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the patient for a retrospective re-interview and for providing epidemiologically related information relevant to this study.

This work was supported by the Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Action Plan, experimental animal research project (No. 23141901900); Basic Research Project of the Sixth People's Hospital of Shanghai (No.ynms202306).

Author information

Siyuan Ma and Dong Wei contributed equally to this work and should be considered co-first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

Department of Infectious Diseases, Shanghai Sixth People’s HospitalAffiliated to, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine , Shanghai, 200233, China

Siyuan Ma, Weiwei Hu, Min Xi, Yi Zhang, Xiaohua Chen & Jie Chen

Department of Infectious Diseases, Research Laboratory of Clinical Virology, Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

Shanghai Key Laboratory of Emergency Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Respiratory Infectious Diseases, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

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Contributions

S.M., D. W. and W. H. performed and analyzed experiments. M.X. and Y. Z. provided patient care, clinical information, and samples from the patient. X. C. and J. C. supervised the research. J. C., S. M. and D. W. wrote the manuscript, and all the co-authors revised, edited, and approved the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xiaohua Chen or Jie Chen .

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Ethics approval is not necessary for this case report. Informed consent was obtained from this patient for being included in the study.

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Written informed consent was obtained from the patient for the publication of this case report.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary material 1. table s1. sars-cov-2 s protein-specific cellular immune responses., rights and permissions.

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Ma, S., Wei, D., Hu, W. et al. A case report of prolonged viral shedding of SARS-CoV-2 in a patient who receive ibrutinib for CLL therapy. BMC Infect Dis 24 , 895 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-024-09794-z

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Received : 10 December 2023

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Published : 02 September 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-024-09794-z

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IMAGES

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COMMENTS

Margaret Howe Lovatt And Her Sexual Encounters With A Dolphin
His 1961 quasi-sci-fi book Man and Dolphin highlighted the theory that dolphins wanted to (and likely could) communicate with humans. Lilly's writings sparked a scientific interest in interspecies communication that set in motion an experiment that went a bit awry with a young woman named Margaret Lovatt. Trying To Connect Dolphins And Humans
Margaret Howe Lovatt
Margaret Howe Lovatt (born Margaret C. Howe, in 1942) is an American former volunteer naturalist from Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.In the 1960s, she took part in a NASA-funded research project in which she attempted to teach a dolphin named Peter to understand and mimic human speech.As a child, she was inspired by a book called Miss Kelly, a story about a cat who communicated with humans.
How A Science Experiment Led to Sexual Encounters Between a Woman and a
A new documentary tells the story of Margaret Howe Lovatt, who in the 1960s took part in a NASA-funded research project, in which she developed an unusual relationship with a dolphin named Peter.
Margaret Howe Lovatt: The Woman Who Fell in Love with a Dolphin
Some reports suggest that she even fell in love with him. Altogether, the story of Margaret Howe Lovatt and the Dolphinarium experiment is a captivating, thought-provoking tale. It is every bit as riveting and scandalous as it sounds. Margaret Lovatt at the Dolphin House on St Thomas. Photograph: Lilly Estate.
In 1965, a young woman lived in isolation with a male dolphin in the
Experiments since 1965 have proved that dolphins have high levels of self-awareness and can understand human sign communication - but there is still little evidence that a dolphin language exists.
'It was gentle': Woman describes sexual experience with dolphin during
A woman who took part in a NASA-funded experiment involving dolphins said the animals became so close to her that one tried to have sex with her. Speaking to the BBC, Margaret recalled one dolphin ...
How A Science Experiment Led to Sexual Encounters Between a Woman and a
How A Science Experiment Led to Sexual Encounters Between a Woman and a Dolphin. Polly Mosendz. June 11, 2014. On June 17th, the BBC will debut a new documentary, The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins ...
The Impossible Love: How a Dolphin Fell in Love with a Woman During a
The bond that developed between the dolphin and the woman in the NASA experiment raises important questions about the psychological implications of interspecies relationships. It challenges traditional notions of love and attachment, and prompts us to reconsider the nature of emotional connections between different species.
Talking dolphins and the love story that wasn't
The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins explores a 1960s project to teach a dolphin English, but its true significance has been buried in sexual innuendo. On the rocky coastline of St Thomas, a small ...
Margaret Howe Lovatt: Dolphins, LSD and a Lot More
Hustler magazine published an article in the late 1970s titled "Interspecies Sex: Humans and Dolphin" and an illustration of a woman nude gripping onto the underside of a dolphin. ... The dolphin experiments in which Margaret Howe Lovatt was involved were anything but ethical. Source: Corina Daniela Obertas / Adobe Stock. By Lauren Dillon.
Sage Research Methods Video
Dr John C. Lilly's Dolphin House was a first-of-its-kind facility in animal research. Margaret Howe Lovatt was a volunteer researcher whose experiments attem ... Margaret Howe Lovatt was a volunteer researcher whose experiments attempted teach dolphins to speak, and early successes were cut short by a tragic ending. Chapter 1: Celebrated ...
Dealing with a dolphin's 'urges'
Subscribe and 🔔 to the BBC 👉 https://bit.ly/BBCYouTubeSubWatch the BBC first on iPlayer 👉 https://bbc.in/iPlayer-Home http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour Margare...
Woman who had sex with DOLPHIN during lab experiments speaks out for
A woman who had sex with a dolphin as part of a scientific study has spoken out for the first time. During the swinging 60s, animal researcher Margaret Howe Lovatt was part of a Nasa-funded ...
'I had a sexual relationship with a dolphin'
The experiment, which plays out like a real-life version of the famous 1973 film "Day of the Dolphin," had a unique set-up. Dr. John C. Lilly, the experiment's leader, flooded a sun-drenched ...
The dolphin who loved me
June 8, 2014. The dolphin who loved me. In the 1960s, Margaret Lovatt was part of a Nasa-funded project to communicate with dolphins. Soon she was living with 'Peter' 24 hours a day in a converted house. Christopher Riley reports for London's Guardian on an experiment that went tragically wrong.
1960s Experiment: Woman Spent 10 Weeks Living Underwater With Dolphin
Margaret Howe Lovatt spent 10 weeks living with six-year-old bottlenose Peter in the 1960s as part of a bizarre NASA-funded experiment.
Human-on-dolphin sex is not really that weird
By Tracy Clark-Flory. It is safe to say that Margaret Howe Lovatt will from here on out be known as the woman who had "sex" with a dolphin. This week, the media went nuts over revelations in a ...
The Experiment That Shocked the World
The dolphin project funded by NASA in the 1960s is one of the most absurd experiments in modern science. The experiment involved interspecies sex, drugs, and a woman living in a flat chair with a dolphin named Peter. The experiment ultimately ended up in a porn magazine. Origins of the Experiment. The experiment was the brainchild of Dr. John ...
Woman reveals she had sex with dolphin during 1960s NASA experiment
A female animal researcher has admitted to sex with a male dolphin during a 1960s NASA-funded experiment. Margaret Howe Lovatt was stationed on the U.S. Virgin Islands as part of a NASA experiment …
The Woman Who Had A S*xual Affair With A Dolphin
Margaret Howe Lovatt was a research assistant who, in the 1960s, took part in a pioneering experiment to teach a captive dolphin how to communicate with huma...
The woman who lived in sin with a dolphin
Experiments since 1965 have proved that dolphins have high levels of self-awareness and can understand human sign communication - but there is still little evidence that a dolphin language exists.
Quadruple amputee Ellie Challis wins gold in women's 50m backstroke
Ellie Challis, the quadruple amputee with no hands or feet who was inspired to swim by a dolphin with a prosthetic tail, raced to her first Paralympic gold medal last night in the women's S3 50m ...
A case report of prolonged viral shedding of SARS-CoV-2 in a patient
Patients on B cell immunosuppressive treatments have been shown to have persistent infection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In this report, a woman treated with ibrutinib for chronic lymphocytic leukemia experienced more than 40 days of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection. Unexpectedly, her peripheral blood experiments showed a normal SARS-CoV-2 ...

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