You're warned to be
careful swimming with dolphins. I never said they were man eaters . . . I mean apart from Flipper biting hands, but I never said he'd eat them.
And you're right, all animals have an aggressive side and that's whether their children are involved or not. But you might be surprised at how aggressive dolphins can be. Dolphins kill. They're predators, but they're also prey so they kill to eat, they kill to survive. They kill sharks, they kill other dolphins, it's nature. Fact is dolphins
have attacked humans without their young being involved, have attacked humans without
having any young. It's presumed that the humans did something to upset the animal which is probably true, the problem is when you teach kids that these are fun loving animals who wouldn't hurt a fly unless that fly is somehow also a shark, you're teaching them the wrong thing.
I'm not trying to say that they're monsters, because
they're not. They're really, really cool animals, I'm just surprised and disappointed that K.A. made it sound like all they wanted to do was jump through hula hoops while their bodies wasted away from lack of actually hunting for and eating fish.
They should have had at least some urge to hunt as pretty much every other predator they morphed did. They didn't need to be psycho like the wolf spider but show us something, like the owl cataloging every prey item it flies over. Kids have a right to know that dolphins are predators and need to be approached with caution so if K.A.'s going for "if it ain't cute they won't conserve it" approach it's just wrong because usually all it takes is for someone to be attacked by a dolphin for people to be in a sudden uproar about the poor things. People need to be aware of the risk involved with dolphins, not just go into the water expecting them to want to play with you, I wouldn't have minded a bit more emphasis on the fact that they could be dangerous sea critters.
Heck, even I kind of wanted to go swimming with dolphins after book 4.
The poor sharks on the other hand are portrayed as evil, mindless killing machines that just couldn't wait to eat their own buddy the instant he showed weakness, like really strong ocean bound taxxons.
