in the water with my legs apart she would go between them and 

 pick me up and carry me a short distance before dropping me 

 again. At first she didn't like the feel of my hands and would 

 dart away, but after a while when she realized I would not harm 

 her she would come up to me to be rubbed and patted. She 

 would quite often let me put little children on her back for a 

 moment or two." (In Antony Alpers, The Dolphin, p. 229.) 



Opo's choice of the gentle Jill Baker for the rides which she 

 gave this thirteen-year-old, suggests not only a sensitive discrimi- 

 nation of the qualities of human beings, but also that the reports 

 of similar incidents which have come down to us from antiquity 

 were based on similarly observed events. The one element in 

 these stories which seemed most difficult to accept, and which is 

 so often represented in ancient art, the boy riding on the back of 

 a dolphin, is now removed from the realm of fancy and placed 

 squarely in the realm of fact. It has been corroborated and sus- 

 tained. 



Mr. Antony Alpers in his book on the dolphin, and especially 

 that part devoted to the eyewitness accounts of Opo's behavior, 

 goes far toward establishing the fact of the dolphin's remarkable 

 capacity for rapport with human beings. But for those striking 

 facts I must recommend you to Mr. Alper's charming book. 



The dolphin's extraordinary interest in and, what we will I 

 am sure not be far wrong in interpreting as, concern for human 

 beings, is dramatically told by George Llano in his report Air- 

 men Against the Sea. This report, written on survival at sea dur- 

 ing the Second World War, records the experience of six Ameri- 

 can airmen, shot down over the Pacific, who found themselves 

 in a seven-man raft being pushed by a porpoise toward land. Un- 

 fortunately the land was an island held by the Japanese. The 

 friendly porpoise must have been surprised and hurt when he 

 found himself being dissuaded from his pushing by being beaten 

 of? with the oars of the airmen. 



Dr. Llano also reports that "Most observers noted that when 



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