Apparently there's a big debate going on in scientific circles. Swimmers and surfers from around the world are coming up with stories that they have somehow been 'rescued' by dolphins and scientists are having trouble accepting that. If someone says 'I was half a mile from the beach and got into trouble, but then a dolphin appeared, swum under me and lifted me up', the scientists can't accept it. They don't believe that dolphins are clever enough to work out that the human is having problems and then planning something like a 'rescue'. Why not? Dolphins have brains that are just about as big as ours. They communicate, using a complex language of grunts, hoots and whistles. They are a social animal, just like human beings, and biologists argue that it was living in colonies that forced us to develop big brains. Ah, apart from the fact that dolphins are mammals in water and we are mammals on land - oh, and they don't have arms. Does that make them stupid?



A very interesting programme on BBC last night gave two well documented examples. In both cases, there were many witnesses so there was no dispute about what actually happened. In the first case, a party of swimmers had been out on a boat in the Red Sea. They came across a school of dolphins and started swimming with them. After some time the dolphins went away and the humans, apart from one, climbed back on their boat. That unfortunate man was then attacked by a shark. It took a bite out of him, and the people on the boat saw a huge pool of blood in the water and swung back to pick him up. Before they got to him, they saw that the dolphins had re-appeared and seemed to be swimming in circles round the victim, as if to protect him from the shark.

Whoah, say the scientists. We don't know that. What, that the dolphins were circling? Ah no, say the men in white coats. They all saw that, there were witnesses. But we don't know the dolphins had thought to themselves, 'This poor unfortunate man, we must protect him'. No, said one highly qualified guy. It might be that dolphins have a 'circle the wagons' instinct. When sharks appear, they group together, for mutual protection. They might just have included this guy because - well, maybe they mistook him for one of their own. I beg your pardon? Dolphins, you say, are not only NOT thinking creatures, they also don't know the difference between legs and a fishy tail?

In the second case, which happened off the North Island of New Zealand, a group of dolphins surrounded a group of swimmers, actually qualified Life Guards. The pack of dolphins swum around the group, keeping them together, for over half an hour, when there was no obvious danger or problem around. That, said the experienced Life Guards, was highly unusual. It was only after about forty five minutes that they saw the fin of the Great White Shark. Ah, say the scientists, don't go interpreting this! You can't say the dolphins knew the shark was there; knew the swimmers were in danger; and went over to protect them. Well, what can you say? Okay, maybe 'The dolphins saved us' implies that the mammals with fins were thinking too much, but you know, you could say 'What the dolphins did saved our lives'. That's true.

Because, at the end of the day - especially at the end of a long day out in the water, avoiding getting eaten - it doesn't really matter what was going through the dolphins' heads. The facts in the two cases above are (i) the swimmers were in danger from sharks; (ii) they avoided death because dolphins were around. It really doesn't matter if the air-breathing, swimming mammals recognise us as a fellow species, and realise our clumsy attempts at swimming often attract sharks, who think we are fish in trouble, (got that fact from 'Jaws'. Watch it again - it's the part when Richard Dreyfus is arguing with the Mayor on the beach).

No, the scientists are having problems with that old chestnut, 'What is really going on?', which means to them, 'What were they thinking?' Lots of us get bound up in that. For instance, it's an established fact that only five per cent of older people in Britain and the United States get to retirement age with enough money to last through. Most of us end up retired and flat broke. That's a fact. It really doesn't matter what was going through our heads; what our intentions were; what we had planned; or what we expected. But we worry about such mental processes. Why? In the last few years the weather has thrown everything at us - hurricanes, floods, brush fires, snow and blizzards - and it's not thinking anything. These things happen. Wouldn't it be a good idea to learn something here? It really doesn't matter if dolphins circle swimmers because they think they're dolphins. The fact is that humans have sometimes been 'saved' by the actions of nearby dolphins, that's all. Unfortunately, out here on dry land, if we're poor, frustrated, not achieving our ambitions and fearful of the future, then one thing is clear. We had better start paddling, because, here and now, there's no chance we're going to be rescued by anything, especially dolphins.