A day in the life of a dolphin: Using bio‐logging tags for improved animal health and well‐being

Abstract

Little quantitative information on the behavior, health, and activity level of managed marine mammals is currently collected, though it has the potential to significantly contribute to management and welfare of these animals. To address this, high‐resolution motion‐sensing digital acoustic recording tags (DTAGs) collected data from animals under human care (n = 5) during their daily routine, and classification algorithms were used for gait analysis and event detection. We collected and examined ~57 h of data from five bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). Day‐scale changes in behavior and activity level were observed and diurnal changes were detected with lower activity at night (n = 1). During the day, animals spent about 70% of their time swimming. The deepest part of the lagoon is ~3 m and individual dives were typically shallow (~1 m) with the dolphins tending to utilize a fluke and glide gait pattern. Activity level was quantified using overall dynamic body acceleration. A significant relationship between normalized activity level and glide duration during different portions of the dive was measured; animals fluked more during descent and glided more during ascent. This could indicate that even during very shallow dives the dolphins use their positive buoyancy to improve energy economy.

Minimizing the impact of biologging devices: Using computational fluid dynamics for optimizing tag design and positioning

“…Designing minimal‐impact tags and testing drag in real systems is however not trivial, as the impact is a complex function of both the position of the tag on the animal as well as its shape and dimensions (Bannasch, Wilson, & Culik, ; Vandenabeele et al, ). One approach to assess the effects of tag‐induced drag is by in‐situ modification of the shape and positioning of tags deployed on a subject animal (or a model of it) in wind or flume tunnels, or in captivity (Culik, Bannasch, & Wilson, ; Shorter et al, ; van der Hoop et al, ). These approaches are beneficial insofar as during live experiments, it is possible to observe how animals react to tags under real operational conditions (cf.…”

Health Assessments of Common Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus): Past, Present, and Potential Conservation Applications

“…This emerging technology could provide a means to assess increased environmental pressure or poor health status (139)(140)(141). Remotely deployed suction cup satellite-linked tags can provide short-term (<24 h) data on bioenergetics, respiratory measures and cardiac data (142,143). An additional remote tool in development is the use of remotely attached singlepin satellite-linked tags.…”

Behavioral Biomarkers for Animal Health: A Case Study Using Animal-Attached Technology on Loggerhead Turtles

“…Animals are recognized as cognizant beings, with high priority now given to understanding behavioral requirements and maximizing animal welfare under human care (Hawkins, 2004;Boissy et al, 2007;Shorter et al, 2017). Generally, animal wellbeing is evaluated through physiological health assessments e.g., periodic blood sampling, which can cause animals distress and pain (Abou-Ismail et al, 2007;Burman et al, 2007;Scollo et al, 2014) whilst also being expensive and time consuming (Hawkins, 2004).…”

“…Somewhat surprisingly, given the clear potential of biologging to monitor animal health, the tagging community has done relatively little work in zoos and aquaria (with the exception of some studies that have used animals under human care to help identify behaviors with a view to using loggers on wild animals (Shepard et al, 2008;Ismail et al, 2012). One notable study that does, however, report on the potential of logging technology to study the well-being of animals under human care, is that by Shorter et al (2017), which examined the activity of a total of ca. 57 h of data derived from 5 bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, using motion-sensing animal-attached tags (DTAGS, see Johnson and Tyack, 2003).…”

“…Another study, on Koalas at a conservation center, used accelerometers in combination with electrocardiogram recorders to assess heart rate during periods of inactivity whilst animals where in the presence and absence of tourists (Ropert-Coudert et al, 2009). Otherwise the lack of tags on animals maintained in a controlled environment per se is particularly curious since tags are unlikely to be lost (Bidder et al, 2014), animals are easy to catch compared to their wild counterparts and can even be trained to participate voluntarily (Ward and Melfi, 2015;Shorter et al, 2017). Moreover, the issue of animal welfare is repeatedly raised within the context of zoos and aquaria (Hill and Broom, 2009).…”