bogleech:

It’s not really a beef with dolphins, but with their image in our culture. They get typecast as these sweet, precious, flawless guardian angels of the sea, secretly smarter than humans and worthy of protection at absolutely all costs.

But they’re actually no smarter than any other average mammal, probably exceeded in intelligence by pigs, and they’re anything but innocent. They’re some of the most brutal predators in nature, and prone to killing other animals just for “play,” territorialism, or sheer aggression. Male dolphins will have sex with just about anything they can and will sometimes beat something to death so they can have sex with the corpse.

If a bottle-nosed dolphin gets hurt by human actions, there can be world-wide outrage. I was around for the panic over dolphins getting caught in fishing nets and every brand of tuna having to advertise that they were “DOLPHIN SAFE!”

…..But the bottle nose isn’t even slightly endangered. If anything, it’s probably over-populated because we’ve elevated it so high above other animals. While we tip-toe around even accidentally harming dolphins, we’re rapidly depleting countless other animals even as by-catch, and we’re driving sharks in particular to near extinction while still casting them as the mean, scary monsters next to angelic, heroic dolphins.

The worst part? The ABSOLUTE worst part????

We can never tip the balance back by eating dolphin for a while instead of shark’s fins or whatever, because their bodies concentrate more mercury than just about anything else in the ocean and can make you deathly ill. We made them POISONOUS and they’re still thriving.

I bet they’re delicious, too. They look like they’d taste like pure butter.

Pods of male dolphins are known to pursue and corner lone females in order to mate with them.

Seriously, a lot of marine mammals are actually really brutal.