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In 2010 journalist and writer Malcolm J. Brenner made headlines when he released his novel Wet Goddess.

What was so controversial about the book? Well, it documented a seven-month love affair between a college student and a dolphin named Ruby and Mr Brenner claims the book is autobiographical.

Mr Brenner, who’s a zoophile activist, claims he was in a relationship with a dolphin named Dolly back in 1970 while he was a sophomore at New College of Florida in Sarasota.

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He’d been hired to take photographs of a dolphin show at an amusement park, a task that gave him free access to the park when the affair began.

Despite what you may think though it wasn’t Mr Brenner who pursued Dolly it was the dolphin who courted him.

During the making of the documentary Dolphin Lover, he claimed that Dolly would rub her genital slit against him, adding that when he tried to push her away, she would get very angry with him.

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He explained:

One time, when she wanted to masturbate on my foot and I wouldn’t let her, she threw herself on top of me and pushed me down to the 12-foot bottom of the pool.

Over time, however, Dolly became more gentle, something Brenner found ‘incredibly erotic’, and the pair eventually consummated their relationship.

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We’re unclear on the exact details but the Huffington Post report that Brenner was vertical while Dolly was horizontal.

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The pair went their separate ways when Dolly was sent to an oceanarium while Brenner went to Evergreen State College in Washington.

Brenner’s affair with the dolphin interestingly didn’t break any laws at the time as Florida only passed a law banning bestiality in 2011 decades after his relationship.

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Dolphin expert Dr. Denise Herzing of the Wild Dolphin Project believes that Brenner’s work aggrandizes human-dolphin sexual relationships, which could be potentially dangerous.

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She told the Huffington Post:

Glorifying human sexual interactions with other species is inappropriate for the health and well being of any animal. It puts the dolphin’s own health and social behavioral settings at risk.

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For his part, however, Brenner doesn’t seem to believe that he harmed Dolly in any way and draws a line between zoophiles and those interested in beastiality.

In Dolphin Lover he notes that ‘bestials’ might just have sex with an animal and walk away while the true zoophiles have tender or caring emotions for their animal partner.

Brenner claims that it was these ‘caring emotions’ which led him to publish Wet Goddess not to titillate zoophiles.

Unrelated dolphin - Getty

He said:

I wrote this book for dolphins because we are mistreating these animals by keeping them in captivity. We should be attempting to communicate with them and treating them with more respect and dignity.

Brenner believes his zoophilia is the result of the ‘very intense physical and sexual abuse’ he claims to have suffered in early childhood at the hands of psychologist Albert Duvall.