I recently watched a harrowing documentary, The Cove. It documents a covert operation to film the regular slaughter of dolphins left in a cove after a drive hunt to capture dolphins for marine mammal parks.

Dolphins are intelligent creatures and their meat is not usually intentionally eaten by humans. Purely anecdotally, humans seem to have a greater emotional bond with marine mammals than most other wild mammals. This is an interesting observation, and there are probably interesting psychological and biological reasons behind it.

So I was quite pleased to see this BBC article on today's front page explaining that swimming with dolphins or keeping them in captivity can be harmful to their health. But then I saw this paragraph:

"Humans do seem to feel a sense of kinship with dolphins, intelligent, playful, talkative creatures that they are. And separate research shows people feel the benefit from getting up close and personal with dolphins, says Dr Dobbs. This is because dolphins are thought to emanate "chi" - the essential life force in Chinese medicine - and the basis of various therapies for clinical depression, autism and brain damage."

I feel that this completely undermines the serious point of this article.