Swimming features in captive odontocetes: Indicative of animals’ emotional state?

Serres, Agathe; Hao, Yiming; Wang, Ding

doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2019.103998

Cited by 23 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…This difference could explain why agonistic interactions and social play were more frequent when having access to a larger space, while socio-sexual interactions were not impacted by the housing pool. This result is congruent with the higher rate of fast swimming in this group that was found when they had access to both pools [60]. Housing environment, including pool configuration, has been shown to influence captive belugas' behavior with more dynamic and variable swim patterns when having access to multiple pools [77].…”

Section: Housing Poolsupporting

confidence: 79%

“…This lower level of playfulness when separated has already been shown in these groups when analyzing solitary play [73]. Separation has also been shown to increase circular swimming and affiliative behaviors, such as social swimming (i.e., synchronous swimming, contact swimming, group swimming), in the presently studied groups [60]. Such social condition could be a stressful situation, eliciting higher cohesion between animals to cope with stress, resulting in lower rates of agonistic interactions.…”

Section: Separationsupporting

confidence: 66%

“…EAFPs also engaged less frequently in socio-sexual interactions when disturbances occurred. It has already been shown that the analyzed disturbances were linked with a higher circular swimming distance and a higher rate of fast swimming in the studied groups [60]. The decrease of agonistic and socio-sexual interactions rates might therefore be due to a matter of time budget (e.g., animals were engaged in other behaviors).…”

Section: Disturbancesmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…YFPs used their right pectoral fin significantly more than their left pectoral fin, which might originate from a hemispheric bias in these animals [59]. These YFPs have been shown to mostly swim clockwise [60], which places their left pectoral fin on the wall side. This position may explain why YFPs used their right pectoral fin more often.…”

Section: Pectoral Fin Contact Lateralitymentioning

confidence: 98%

“…A long-term decrease in such interactions could therefore indicate social issues in a group. It is currently hard to explain why socio-sexual behaviors increased in potentially stressful contexts for YFPs, but since they only increased during disturbance types that did not elicit the most obvious response (i.e., pool cleaning resulted in obvious changes in swimming behaviors [60]), it might indicate that the level of disturbance could play a role in the animals' response. Finally, social play was more frequent in BDs during disturbances (pool cleaning and social events).…”

Section: Disturbancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Body Contacts and Social Interactions in Captive Odontocetes Are Influenced by the Context: An Implication for Welfare Assessment

Serres

Hao

Wang

2020

Animals

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Research on the welfare of captive odontocetes has increased in recent years, but has been mostly focused on bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). Few studies investigated potential welfare indicators using quantitative data linked to a range of conditions or stimuli that are thought to impact the animals’ emotional state. Since odontocetes are social animals that engage in various social interactions, these interactions might inform us on their welfare state. We investigated pectoral contact laterality and the effect of the context on several social behaviors in three groups of captive odontocetes (Yangtze finless porpoises, YFPs: Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis; East-Asian finless porpoises, EAFPs: N. a. sunameri, and bottlenose dolphins, BDs). Animals exhibited patterns depending on the time of the day for most of the social behaviors we analyzed; social separation was associated with lower rates of social behaviors for the two analyzed groups (YFPs and BDs), the accessibility to several pools was associated with higher rates of social behaviors for BDs. The effect of enrichment, disturbances and public presence was less clear and strongly depended on the group, the type of enrichment and disturbance. Our results confirm that captive odontocetes’ social behaviors are influenced by the context, and that, depending on the group, some of them, such as pectoral contacts, other body contacts, agonistic interactions or social play exhibit consistent patterns across contexts. Monitoring these behaviors might be useful to adapt the captive management to each species and group. The different responses among the three studied groups confirm that species and groups react differently to a stimulus and therefore, management decisions should be species/group specific. We recommend that more studies should be conducted to validate our findings in other groups of odontocetes under human care.

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Section: Housing Poolsupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Separationsupporting

confidence: 66%

Section: Disturbancesmentioning

confidence: 79%

Section: Pectoral Fin Contact Lateralitymentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Disturbancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Body Contacts and Social Interactions in Captive Odontocetes Are Influenced by the Context: An Implication for Welfare Assessment

Serres

Hao

Wang

2020

Animals

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The plasma phospholipidome of Tursiops truncatus: From physiological insight to the design of prospective tools for managed cetacean monitorization

Monteiro

Maciel

Melo

et al. 2021

Lipids

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Plasma biochemical analysis remains one of the established ways of monitoring captive marine mammal health. More recently, complementary plasma lipidomic analysis has proven to be a valid tool in disease diagnosis and prevention, with the potential to validate and complement common biochemical analysis, providing a more integrative approach. In this study, we thoroughly characterized the plasma polar lipid content of Tursiops truncatus, the most common cetacean species held under human care. Our results showed that phosphatidylcholine, lysophosphatidylcholine, and sphingomyelins (CerPCho) are the most represented phospholipid classes in T. truncatus plasma. Palmitic, oleic, and stearic acids are the major fatty acid (FA) present esterified to the plasma polar lipids of this species, although some n-3 species are also remarkably present, namely eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acids. The polar lipidome identified by HILIC LC-MS allowed identifying 304 different lipid species. These species belong to the phosphatidylcholine (103 lipid species), lysophosphatidylcholine (35), phosphatidylethanolamine (71), lysophosphatidylethanolamine (20), phosphatidylglycerol (13), lysophosphatidylglycerol (5), phosphatidylinositol (15), lysophosphatidylinositol (3), phosphatidylserine (6) lysophosphatidylserine (1), and sphimgomyelin (32) classes. This was the first time that the dolphin plasma phospholipid profile was characterized, providing a knowledge that will be important to further understand lipid metabolism and physiological regulation in small cetaceans. Furthermore, this study proved the practicability of the use of plasma lipid profiling for health assessment in marine mammals under human care.

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Contextual impacts on individual and synchronous breathing rate variations in three captive odontocete groups

2020

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Breathing rates are often collected both in the wild and in captivity to inform on cetaceans' internal state. However, few studies have investigated the effect of various factors on this breathing rate. We investigated the variations of individual and synchronous breathing rates depending on individual features (species, sex, age), displayed behavior, social parameters (social grouping), and environmental parameters (diurnal variation, presence of enrichment, unusual events, and presence of visitors in three groups of captive odontocetes (Yangtze finless porpoises, Neophocaena asiaeorentalis asiaeorientalis, East‐Asian finless porpoises, Neophocaena asiaeorentalis sunameri, bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus). Both individual and synchronous breathing rates were the highest when animals engaged in energetic or social behaviors. Individual breathing rate decreased but synchronous breathing rate increased with the presence of enrichment. Both rates increased during unusual events (e.g., pool cleaning, presence of a diver in the pool, noise, transport) and when public was present for Yangtze finless porpoises. Finally, synchronous breathing rate increased for Yangtze finless porpoises when experiencing social separation. We suggest that individual and synchronous breathing rates are useful parameters to measure, both in wild and captive animals, to obtain information on their arousal/stress state. However, these rates should be interpreted with caution and should be used together with other parameters to allow more accurate inferences.

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Swimming features in captive odontocetes: Indicative of animals’ emotional state?

Cited by 23 publications

References 73 publications

Body Contacts and Social Interactions in Captive Odontocetes Are Influenced by the Context: An Implication for Welfare Assessment

Body Contacts and Social Interactions in Captive Odontocetes Are Influenced by the Context: An Implication for Welfare Assessment

The plasma phospholipidome of Tursiops truncatus: From physiological insight to the design of prospective tools for managed cetacean monitorization

Contextual impacts on individual and synchronous breathing rate variations in three captive odontocete groups

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