It appears the secret is out.
Costa Rica’s incredible spinner dolphin “superpods,” along with Tico Times “The Big Blue” columnist Shawn Larkin, have been featured in a recent Vanity Fair story written by entertainment executive Tom Freston. Freston accompanied Larkin into the open ocean and encountered thousands of spinner dolphins leaping out of the water and having sex with each other. After all, a superpod is basically Burning Man for dolphins, Freston writes.
Shawn Larkin
“It turns out that dolphins are one of the most promiscuous animals on the planet,” he wrote. “They don’t mate just for reproduction. They enjoy sex. It’s a social binder for them, like a handshake. On a good day a dolphin can have sex 50 times. Dolphins do it with everyone . . . old, young, big, small, even family members. Homosexual behavior is common, as is masturbation; dolphins have even been known to make advances at human beings. The dark side of the dolphin—the turd in the superpod—is that sometimes dolphin sex can be violent and nonconsensual. Rape and gang rape happens. We did not see any of that, though. This seemed to be a law-abiding lot.”
Tico Times also recently sent correspondents down to check out the superpods. Somehow, we ended up crewing a sailboat for three days while a video journalist for a popular broadcasting corporation obtained footage for an upcoming superpod documentary. Stay tuned!
