Meet the bottlenose dolphin that packs a meaner punch than Mike Tyson!

London, Oct 11 : A boat ride turned out to be a painful experience for an elderly couple, Norman and Barbara Howard, when a bottlenose dolphin leapt up high in the air and landed in the boat they were sailing in.

The middle-aged couple from Ohio were enjoying a ride in their daughter's 18ft boat on the Intracoastal Waterway near Smyrna Beach when the incident took place.

The couple and their daughter and her boyfriend were watching a school of dolphins leaping and playing in the water ahead of them, when one of them, estimated to be at 8-10ft long and weighing about 400lb, jumped right into the air in front of them.

"We were going under the bridge, and the next thing I knew I had a big old fish on top of us," the Telegraph quoted Mr Howard, 64, as saying.

As soon as it landed in the boat the animal started to thrash about in a panicky way, knocking the couple to the deck and smacking them with its tail.

"That thing had a good punch," he said.

"Mike Tyson does not hit that hard," he added.

The boat's occupants eventually had to use their legs to roll the dolphin over the side of the boat and back into the water, suffering bad bruises and cuts that required medical attention.

It was later explained by a dolphin expert that the animal had probably been an inexperienced calf that jumped unnaturally high after getting spooked.

--ANI