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National Geographic : 1966 Sep
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first grew interested in dolphins at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in 1949. Dr. Lilly is also known for his studies of monkey and human brains. Earlier he worked in biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, where he had earned his M.D. Seeking Limits of Dolphin Intelligence Dr. Lilly became fascinated with the bottle nose: its large brain, its apparent intelligence, and its seeming ability to communicate. So in 1959-60 he built his own dolphin laboratory on a peninsula of the island of St. Thomas in the Caribbean (pages 408-9). Thus was born the Communication Re search Institute, of which Dr. Lilly is director. The CRI, as it's called, has since expanded into a bigger (indoor) laboratory in Miami, but keeps the one on St. Thomas, too, and it was there that I first met Dr. Lilly and three of his dolphins, Peter, Pam, and Sissy. He has four more in Miami. Incidentally, he refers to his St. Bernard of the sea, Tuffy swims to a "lost" aquanaut in a simulated rescue near Sealab II, an undersea station 205 feet deep in the Pacific off La Jolla, California. After John F. Reeves has hooked the line to Tuffy's harness, the porpoise, called by a buzz er, streaks toward "lost diver" Kenneth J. Conda, 50 feet away. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC artist Robert C. Magis exaggerates water clarity; actually the men could see only a few yards. Tuffy (above) responds to another diver's low-frequency signals; he sometimes homed on the sound from 500 yards away. The animal carried mail and tools to 10 divers submerged in Sealab II. 421
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