Scientists once gave dolphins the hallucinogenic drug LSD, in an attempt to communicate with them. Funded by NASA, the Communication Research Institute, informally known as The Dolphin House, investigated methods of talking to the creatures in the 1960s. They also used a range of techniques in an attempt to teach the animals English. John Lilly, a neuroscientist who led the work, studied three dolphins in particular, one of which he chose to leave in an isolation tank with a human 24 hours a day for three months. During the isolation period the dolphin, named Peter, began making sexual advances towards researcher, Margaret Howe Lovatt, who chose to relieve the animal's urges because it was proving to be disruptive to the training. Ultimately, none of the dolphins were able to learn English. But researchers found that they were 70 per cent more vocal after they were administered with LSD.

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