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Digital Publisher
Digital Commons at St. Mary's University
Publication Date
Spring 2025
Keywords
dolphins; behavior; comparing; swimming
Description
Longitudinal observations of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in managed care provide opportunities to assess behavior within different contexts, which may provide insights into individual and population wellbeing (e.g., Delfour et al., 2021; Serres et al., 2021). Since 2019, a longitudinal study on space use by bottlenose dolphins housed at a lagoon-based facility in Roatán, Honduras, has been conducted. Dolphin behavior and location data were collected with the goal of comparing behavior without humans present to varying contexts in which humans were present. The purpose of this descriptive study was to assess behaviors exhibited by dolphins in close proximity to a swimming, non-interactive researcher, which represent a subset of the available data. Secondarily, observed behaviors directed toward the swimming researcher were examined during each session to determine if researcher presence was associated with specific behaviors.
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Size
1 page
City
San Antonio, Texas
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.