NASA funded a bizarre scientific experiment in the 1960s that involved feeding LSD to a dolphin to see if it would help the animal learn to speak English.

A closer look

NASA funded a bizarre scientific experiment in the 1960s that involved feeding LSD to a dolphin to see if it would help the animal learn to speak English. A researcher named Margaret Howe Lovatt lived in a flooded house with a male dolphin named Peter for six months, attempting to teach him basic vocabulary through endless repetition and positive reinforcement. When traditional methods failed, the project director decided that injecting the marine mammal with psychedelic drugs was the obvious logical next step. Shockingly, tripping on acid did not magically grant the dolphin the ability to articulate human speech, but it did make him incredibly aggressive and inappropriate toward his trainer. The funding was eventually pulled when scientists realized they were basically just running a taxpayer-funded psychedelic frat house for highly intelligent sea creatures