There once was a young feline named Maddy who found herself adrift on a raft, floating aimlessly in the middle of the ocean. For three days and three nights she wafted alone, without any food and surrounded by water she couldn’t drink.

“Oh, why won’t anybody come and rescue me?!” she shouted into the sky, hoping by some miracle someone would answer her cry. “Am I truly all alone in this vast, blue sea?”

Just then, a great white shark swam over to Maddy’s raft and poked his head out of the water.

“Greetings, furry mammal,” he said with a massive, toothy grin. “I couldn’t help but notice you’re stranded out here. Why don’t you jump on my back and I’ll swim you over to the nearest land mass?”

Maddy thought about the offer, but only briefly.

“The moment I hop on,” she deducted, “you’ll dive under the water, leave me splashing about, then come back up and eat me. I’m afraid I’ll have to pass.”

Dejected, the shark turned and swam away, without so much as a rebuttal. Next, an octopus approached Maddy with a similar offer.

“Your raft doesn’t seem to be moving very swiftly,” the eight-limbed mollusk observed. “If you’d like, I could grab a hold of it and pull you to the closest shore.”

Again, Maddy gave the proposal some thought, but politely declined.

“If I let you wrap your tentacles around my raft,” she reasoned, “you’ll be close enough to grab me and you’ll drag me down to your underwater lair where I’ll drown. No thank you.”

Like the great white before him, the octopus left in a huff, mumbling curse words under his breath as he swam away. Shortly thereafter, Maddy’s third visitor approached. It was a big, friendly dolphin.

“Anything I can do to help?” the affable Delphinidae sincerely queried. “If you wanna grab onto my fin, I can swim you all the way back to your home.”

Maddy was receptive to this particular overture. Having recently watched a documentary on the Discovery Channel, she knew that dolphins were kind, nurturing and generally all-around good creatures. Plus, they’re just as smart as humans, so they’ve got that going for them as well. She happily accepted the offer.

About an hour or so into their journey, the dolphin asked his purring passenger if she was hungry.

“I’m starving!” she expeditiously confirmed. “What do you have in mind?”

“I know a great tuna place,” he proudly proclaimed. “Tons of ‘em! All just swimming about. It’s right over there!”

Maddy’s heart sunk. Not far away, in the same direction the duo was heading, she spotted a boat. It was a tuna boat. The very same tuna boat she was forcefully cast off of for eating a good portion of the payload.

“No no no!” she shouted. “Turn back! The captain said if he ever saw me again he’d skin me alive!”

But before the dolphin could do as requested, a giant net filled with hundreds of tuna emerged from beneath, trapping the both of them. Unable to move and facing an uncertain fate, the dolphin wriggled close to Maddy as they were hoisted onto the vessel.

“Wouldn’t ya know it,” he profoundly understated, “this happens to me EVERY. DAMN. TIME!!”

The moral of the story? Dolphins are indeed just as smart as humans. But you shouldn’t just assume that’s a good thing.