'As soon as I started learning about them I got sidetracked permanently into being curious about their intelligence and comparing them with humans'
RACHEL SMOLKER lives in Vermont in the United States with her husband, a four-year-old, a baby, six ravens, several chickens, a starling and a rabbit. She raised ducklings last summer and soon will be playing tug-of-war with a puppy. But despite being surrounded by creatures that crawl, fly and hop, she dreams about a smiley-faced animal that is a torpedo in water and a trapeze artist in the air.
A behavioural ecologist, however, Smolker has no illusions about dolphins, the creature New Agers long ago adopted as their mascot and one she has devoted almost a third of her life to studying. During her 13 years at Monkey Mia, a remote beach in Shark Bay, Western Australia, she helped reveal aspects of their social interactions that have led to a revised perception of the mammals. Building on her observations of, for example, the way that lusty males co-operate to herd females together and force them to mate, others have since pieced together a profile of an animal that is capable of not only rape but also infanticide and murder.
In her just-released To Touch A Wild Dolphin (Nan A Talese/ Doubleday), which details her life and work at Monkey Mia, Smolker writes about the reactions of some people to the notion these creatures have a dark side.
Elizabeth Gawain, the yoga teacher who first sparked Smolker's interest in Monkey Mia in the early 1980s, 'broke down in tears', according to the book. Another dolphin fan theorised that Smolker and her colleagues were simply projecting their own personalities on to the dolphins.
'I knew a lot about chimpanzees and about human behaviour,' Smolker says, explaining why her findings did not disappoint her. 'I think I was more intrigued. That was my reaction rather than 'Oh gee, I was hoping they'd be nice all the time'.'
