# Heinlein question -- "Gulf" & "Friday" (open spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 19, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-question-gulf-friday-open-spoilers/557715 "2010-10-19T23:30:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 43
**Author:** ![MIchelleRose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e19b73/32.png) [@MIchelleRose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MIchelleRose)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2015, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-question-gulf-friday-open-spoilers/557715/43 "2015-03-19T05:46:23Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [That is not true.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin#Attacks_on_humans) At least, not WRT dolphins, don’t know about porpoises. I stand corrected. \*One \*incident. On the other hand, if a bunch of people were trying to jam sticks up \*your \*nose, wouldn’t \*you \*be a little irritable? All the other damages can be attributed to excessive playfulness and a porpoise’s innate practical joker mentality. They like to play tricks, both on humans and each other. That’s another sign of a highly intelligent species: a well-developed sense of humor. Orcas are \*not \*friendly and should \*never \*be considered as such, even though they are at least as intelligent as porpoises. They are the “wolves of the sea” and anyone with half a brain will put lots of distance between themselves and two and a half tons of sentient carnivore. Definitions: dolphins are fish, _coryphaenidae_, like the pompano. Porpoises are the mammals we know as bottlenose dolphins. The two terms are often mixed, much to the grief of marine biologists. I know a couple and they always frown when I use the term “dolphin” to describe _tursiops truncatus_. Bad form, doncha know. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-question-gulf-friday-open-spoilers/557715)._