There are many reasons to visit the Italian city of Venice – and it’s far more than just the gondolas.

Known as a top destination for couples thanks to its romantic canals and beautiful architecture, this city is actually built on a lagoon: back in the fifth century, wooden piles were literally hammered into the Venetian Lagoon, and this is what the city we know today was built on top of.

This novel building practice comes with an issue for us now though, over 1,000 years later. Over time, subsidence and rising sea levels have come together to cause the city to sink, with estimates suggesting the city (which floods every year) will be uninhabitable by the year 2100.

In the meantime though, the city is there for us to enjoy – and in the last year, a quite unlikely visitor has seized the opportunity to call the city its home.

Back in 2025, a bottlenose dolphin – now known as ‘Mimmo’ – was spotted in the Venetian lagoon, much to the delight and wonder of locals and tourists alike.

Initially, people were concerned about the dolphin, particularly because the creature seems to be living alone in the city’s waters.

But according to researchers at the University of Padova, while dolphins usually travel in a pod, it’s not unusual for them to live alone, particularly in coastal or human areas. And Venice is just as much for solo travellers as it is for lovers, after all.

However, as more people flocked to see Mimmo, there was one thing that really put the dolphin in danger, as Dr Guido Pietroluongo explained in a statement:

“Observing bottlenose dolphins in urban areas is not particularly surprising, as they are extremely adaptable and opportunistic marine mammals. Mimmo appears healthy and is regularly observed feeding on mullets. Since his arrival in the lagoon, any behavior displayed has been typical of the species. Our observations document this animal’s remarkable adaptation to an unusual context and highlight the need to manage human behavior to ensure its welfare.”

Why does human behavior need to be managed? That’s a question that would be met with side-eye by the dodo and the Caspian tiger – if we hadn’t already caused their extinction, that is.

Humans are notoriously unpredictable, and while no one is suggesting that anyone’s about to go and hunt Mimmo, the significant amounts of boat traffic offers the dolphin a risk from propellors; at sea he’d be at risk from fisheries; close to tourists, he’s at risk from people trying to touch or feed him, as the team explained in an article published in the journal Frontiers in Ethology, and Dr Giovanni Bearzi hammered home in the statement:

“This situation is primarily about managing human behavior rather than managing the dolphin. Recognizing the priority of safeguarding a protected species, treating it as a wild animal, and behaving in an informed, aware, and responsible way is key in wildlife management. What is truly unusual is not the dolphin’s presence, but the persistent difficulty humans have in respecting such animals today. We need to appreciate the opportunities to coexist with and enjoy wildlife. Historical and contemporary documentation clearly shows that dolphins have accompanied human maritime activities for millennia, yet we still struggle to coexist with them appropriately.”

Look, but don’t touch, the researchers seem to imply – a sentiment that we could all live by, all of the time anyway.

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