Even for the 1960s, neuroscientist and LSD experimenter John Lilly was far out there (see here and here and here). His interspecies communication research with dolphins for NASA gradually came to include providing the creatures with interspecies sex and psychedelic drugs. From Christopher Riley’s eye-popping Guardian article about Margaret Howe Lovatt, a young woman who lived with the dolphin named Peter until the project capsized:

“In the 1960s a small selection of neuroscientists like John Lilly were licensed to research LSD by the American government, convinced that the drug had medicinal qualities that could be used to treat mental-health patients. As part of this research, the drug was sometimes injected into animals and Lilly had been using it on his dolphins since 1964, curious about the effect it would have on them.

Much to Lilly’s annoyance, nothing happened. Despite his various attempts to get the dolphins to respond to the drug, it didn’t seem to have any effect on them, remembers Lovatt. ‘Different species react to different pharmaceuticals in different ways,’ explains the vet, Andy Williamson. ‘A tranquilliser made for horses might induce a state of excitement in a dog. Playing with pharmaceuticals is a tricky business to say the least.’

Injecting the dolphins with LSD was not something Lovatt was in favour of and she insisted that the drug was not given to Peter, which Lilly agreed to. But it was his lab, and they were his animals, she recalls. And as a young woman in her 20s she felt powerless to stop him giving LSD to the other two dolphins.

While Lilly’s experimentation with the drug continued, Lovatt persevered with Peter’s vocalisation lessons and grew steadily closer to him. ‘That relationship of having to be together sort of turned into really enjoying being together, and wanting to be together, and missing him when he wasn’t there,’ she reflects. ‘I did have a very close encounter with – I can’t even say a dolphin again – with Peter.’

By autumn 1966, Lilly’s interest in the speaking-dolphin experiment was dwindling. ‘It didn’t have the zing to it that LSD did at that time,’ recalls Lovatt of Lilly’s attitude towards her progress with Peter. ‘And in the end the zing won.'”