A lone dolphin that has been swimming for months off the Cayman Islands is apparently looking for love in all the wrong places.
Stinky, a roughly 20-year-old bottlenose dolphin, has been separated from his pod and is looking for a mate—only with the wrong kind of mammal. You see, Stinky has been trying to have sex with scuba divers (see video below).
"He spent a fair amount of time engaging in very high-risk behavior," Laura Engleby, a marine mammal branch chief with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Associated Press. "There is concern for his safety."
While Stinky has delighted boaters and swimmers in the area, scientists worry that he is a danger to humans and could hurt himself.
Engleby said the dolphin gets too close to moving boat propellers and also likes to rub against other dangerous objects near the coast.
According to experts, it is unusual for bottlenose dolphins to separate from their pods, and that there were only about 30 such cases reported globally. It’s a mystery as to how Stinky got to the Caymans, considering the nearest dolphins of his kind are hundreds of miles away in Cuba and the Bahamas, veterinarian Chris Dold told AP.
Dold said the absence of female dolphins might help explain Stinky's behavior.
"What's unusual about this, of course, is not necessarily the behavior that this male dolphin is demonstrating, but that those behaviors appear to be directed toward people," he said.
Cayman Islands videographer Michael Maes can vouch for that. While scuba diving in the Caribbean with his wife, he caught on camera a visibly aroused Stinky trying to mate with him. The dolphin also charged toward his wife.
Maes’ YouTube video of the incident has generated nearly 500,000 views as of Friday. Watch it, below.
