Files
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Publication Date
Summer 2025
Digital Publisher
Digital Commons at St. Mary's University
Collection
McNair Scholars Symposium
Keywords
Odontocetes, Sexual interaction, Sociosexual interaction, Development, Adult female
Description
Reproduction is essential for every species to maintain their population. Observations of beluga (Delphinapterus leucas) reproduction in the wild and managed care have been limited, with few recordings of sexual behavior. Most data of sexual/sociosexual behavior have been of male-onmale interactions. This leaves a substantial gap in male and female interactions, specifically between adult females and juvenile/immature males. Footage collected between 2013 and 2025 were collected from SeaWorld, San Antonio, housing 17 beluga whales throughout these years, eight females (seven adults, one juvenile female), and nine males (two adults, seven juveniles). From about 21 hours of data, this study showed that adult females did initiate in sociosexual and sexual interactions with juvenile males during the breeding season. Adult females initiated more sociosexual interactions when there were fewer males in a social group but appeared to initiate more sexual interactions when there were 3-4 juvenile males. These social interactions suggest that adult females may potentially play a critical role in the sociosexual/sexual development of juvenile males.
Disciplines
Developmental Psychology
Format
MOV
Medium
Video
Size or Duration
12 minutes 21 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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