In the 1970's, a hippie college student falls in love with a female dolphin.

Our species is more profoundly connected to the sea than we ever realized, as an intrepid cadre of scientists, athletes, and explorers is now discovering. Deep follows these adventurers into the ocean to report on the latest findings about its wondrous biology -- and unimagined human abilities.

Reveals the shared ancestry behind our affinity with dolphins and our shared destiny • Explains how we are both descendants of the aquatic ape and still share many physiological features with dolphins that set us apart from other primates • Explores dolphins’ communication with other species and how dolphin therapy has miraculous effects on people with autism, cancer, stroke, and depression • Explores the connections between dolphins and Atlantis and Lemuria Wild animals avoid contact with humans, but wild dolphins seek us out to play and socialize, even going so far as to voluntarily rescue people from drowning. What explains this remarkable natural affinity? Revealing the evolutionary basis for our special relationship with dolphins, Frank Joseph explains how we are both descendants of the same ancient branch of human-ity. Building upon the aquatic ape theory, he details how we both began on land but devastating floods forced our distant ancestors into the seas, where humanity developed many of the traits that set us apart from other primates, such as our instinctive diving reflex and our newborns’ ability to swim. But while some of the aquatic apes returned to land, later evolving into modern humans, some remained in the cradle of Mother Ocean and became our dolphin cousins. Integrating scientific research on dolphin intelligence, communication, and physiology with enduring myths from some of the world’s oldest cultures, such as the Aborigines, Norse, Greeks, and Celts, the author examines our physical commonalities with dolphins, including their vestigial thumbs and legs, birth processes, and body temperature. He explores dolphins’ uncanny ability to diagnose disease such as cancer in humans and how dolphin therapy has had miraculous effects on children with autism, victims of stroke, and those suffering from depression. He provides evidence for dolphins’ different attitudes toward men, women, and children, their natural affinity with cats and dogs, and their telepathic communication with other species, including ours. He explores dolphins’ mysterious role in the birth of early civilization and their connections with the Dog Star, Sirius, and Atlantis and Lemuria--a bond still commemorated by annual gatherings of millions of dolphins. As Frank Joseph shows, if we can learn to fully communicate with dolphins, accessing their millennia-old oral tradition, we may learn the truth about humanity’s origins and our shared future, when humankind may yet again quit the land for a final return to the sea.

Dolphin culture evolved over millions of years so they could remain perfectly attuned with their world, the ocean. But the growing pressure of man's activities become intolerable and in frustration they seek an aggressive new path, making a shocking departure from the ancient philosophy that has guided them so well through the millennia.

Justin Gregg weighs up the claims made about dolphin intelligence and separates scientific fact from fiction.

"Wild Ones is a tour through our environmental moment and the eccentric cultural history of people and wild animals in America that inflects it. With propulsive curiosity and searing wit, and without that easy moralizing and nature worship of environmental journalism's older guard, [Jon] Mooallem merges reportage, science, and history into a humane and endearing meditation on what it means to live in, and bring life into, a broken world."--Back cover.