Tangentially related: the fucked-up experiments they were doing on dolphins, like giving them LSD or keeping one in a flooded, human-style house and trying to teach it English: The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong | The Guardian
content warning:
spoiler
it involves a caretaker routinely jerking off the dolphin she lived with, then the project got shut down, and the dolphin was kept in so bad circumstances that it committed suicide after a few weeks