After learning about the experiment where a woman lived in a house with a dolphin to teach it, and by the end of the project she was instructed to jerk off the dolphin to calm him down, I cannot be surprised anymore
That experiment was proposed by Carl Sagan, though I’m reasonably certain he meant that we should inject the humans with LSD to learn dolphin languages, not the other way around.
Source? I don’t think Sagan suggested the LSD use either way, that was John Lilly’s thing.
Sagan was interested in Lilly’s dolphin experiments because he was interested in developing inter species communication techniques, because he was really interested in how we could communicate with aliens.
Lilly was the psychonaut. He invented the sensory deprivation tank during the dolphin experiments, would use it on LSD to try to telepathically communicate with them, and gave the dolphins LSD a few times. Years after the dolphin experiments he went kind of nuts taking high dose ketamine and trying to communicate with aliens.
What?! You are remembering that story wrong. She was a dolphin trainer or some scientist and jerked of the dolphin because she thought the dolphin was depressed and lonely.
Edit: Found the source https://allthatsinteresting.com/margaret-howe-lovatt