Margaret Howe Lovatt

Margaret Howe Lovatt (born Margaret C. Howe, in 1942) is an American former volunteer naturalist from Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. In the 1960s, she took part in a NASA-funded research project in which she attempted to teach a dolphin named Peter to understand and mimic human speech. As a child, she was inspired by a book called Miss Kelly, a story about a cat who communicated with humans. This inspired her to research teaching animals to speak human language. Dolphinarium When she was in her early 20s, Lovatt lived on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas, where there was a laboratory to research dolphins. The director of the laboratory, Gregory Bateson, allowed her to observe dolphin behavior, and was impressed by her enthusiasm and diligence as an observer despite her lack of scientific training. While volunteering at the laboratory, she met John C. Lilly, a neuroscientist with the California Institute of Technology...