Did somebody say humans?! (NASA/Creative Commons)

It’s not easy being a dolphin. A lot of the other fish laugh at you because you’re a mammal and have to surface to breathe. If you’re scared of sharks, it’s not like you can stay out of the water. And everyone’s telling you to stay in schools. It’s even worse when you hit puberty, since there aren’t any birds or bees in the ocean, and you have to figure that out by yourself. That’s being given as the primary cause of a series of dolphin attacks in Japan, except there’s a chance it’s not the work of a whole bunch of sexually frustrated dolphins egging each other on, but perhaps only one sad, super horny dolphin.

Wakasa Bay, Japan, is about 200 miles from Tokyo, and since 2022, there have been at least 47 dolphin attacks in the region. Most of the injuries have been bites on hands from people trying to touch them, but one swimmer last year suffered broken ribs, as well as a ton of embarrassment when asked how he broke them. There have been at least 18 attacks this year alone. A whale professor reported that the dorsal fin of a dolphin shown biting a man’s fingers matched that of a dolphin seen last year in the area. We should also note that cetology is the study of whales, professor Tadamichi Morisaka’s field, which sadly means he’s not an actual whale that got his doctorate. His whale math led him to believe that it could be the same dolphin repeatedly attacking swimmers looking for love, or in nautical speed terms, a one-knot stand.

Dolphins, especially bottlenose dolphins, are social animals, and it’s not usual for them to travel alone, as this dolphin has. A separate non-cetologist, marine biologist Simon Allen, suggests that this poor, horny dolphin might have been ostracized from his community and is just trying to playfully interact with humans. Morisaka said that male dolphins communicate by play-biting each other, while Allen says that sexual frustration and the desire to dominate may cause injuries to humans since dolphins are much larger. 

So there are now signs asking swimmers to stay away from dolphins (see above), which, if this dolphin sees them, will probably just frustrate him even more. But maybe he’s just kind of a jerk. If you saw him at a sandbar, he’d probably be casting a wide net, going up to everyone with bad fishing lines that he read on the net. We know that type when we sea it. Regardless, if you’re anywhere off the coast of Japan and see a dolphin, approach it at your own risk.