Files
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Publication Date
Summer 2025
Digital Publisher
Digital Commons at St. Mary's University
Collection
McNair Scholars Symposium
Keywords
Age, Beluga, Delphinapterus leucas, Action, Object Play
Description
The presence of play is used as an indicator of well-being in many species including belugas. The purpose of the current study was to explore if object play exhibited by belugas varied between young and adult animals. Within the year 2023, 79 archived videos of the belugas at SeaWorld Texas were selected and coded for object play, which included water, enrichment devices, and organic material. Adult and young belugas engaged in a similar amount of play bouts and actions during object play. These findings suggest that belugas in managed care experience positive well-being as indicated by the presence of object play but do not address how object play emerges over development. Future research should explore the emergence of play to examine how development and experience influence actions with objects.
Disciplines
Developmental Psychology
Format
MOV
Medium
Video
Size or Duration
10 minutes 58 seconds
City
San Antonio, Texas
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
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