Carolina Pinales - 2023
Files
Publication Date
11-10-2023
Digital Publisher
Digital Commons at St. Mary's University
Disciplines
Aquaculture and Fisheries | Higher Education
Keywords
Beluga Whale, Attachment, Behavior, Mother-Calf Relationships
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Collection
McNair Scholars Symposium
Format
MOV
Medium
video
Description
John Bowlby’s theory of attachment is found to be a way of explaining why bonds are important in being formed for both physiological and psychological needs to be met in human offspring. However, attachments also exist within and betweenspecies. This study examined 11.71 hours of video recordings of a beluga (Delphinapterus leucas) mother-calf pair housed at SeaWorld Texas over two years of the calf’s life.It was expected that as the calf matured, mother-calf swims would decrease while solo swimming increased. of the duration of myriad behaviors were recorded and included mother-calf swims, solo swims, affiliative behaviors and agonistic behaviors. Although mother-calf swims stayed consistent across the first two years, solo swimming initiated increased. Evidence of secure base and safe haven use was observed between the calf and his mother as was maternal intervention and other caregiving behaviors by his mother. These different interactions suggest that the bond between the mother and calf could be described as an attachment e. Additional study of beluga mother-calf relationships could determine if belugas form specific types of secure or insecure attachments
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