The Dolphin and the Desert Island

Have you heard the story about the dolphin and the monkey?

In ancient Greece, a ship was wrecked in a furious storm. One of its sailors had a pet monkey. The monkey was cast adrift in the shipwreck. A kindly dolphin rescued the monkey from drowning. The dolphin set off with the monkey on its back to take him ashore to Piraeus. As they got to chatting, the dolphin asked the monkey if he knew anyone in Piraeus.

Not realizing that Piraeus is a place and thinking no one would be the wiser, the monkey boasted that he was best friends with Piraeus. The dolphin saw through the lie and was furious. The dolphin paid back the lie by dumping the monkey on a deserted island, leaving the monkey to fend for itself.

The moral of the story?

In a perilous situation, try not to talk out of your hat.

You need to head a thousand miles due north and about two and a half milennia forward from ancient Greece to find another reference to a dolphin that is on my mind today.

In July 2023, a Hungarian publisher of regional news posted a short article with a few quotes from local musical artist Kozso. In it, Kozso spoke about a curious passion project of his: the idea of ​​placing freshwater dolphins in an aquarium near Lake Balaton.

As best as I can gather, someone at this regional publication posted a request to Google’s AI chatbot Gemini to summarize this article in Hungarian. Like Company, the owner of various regional…