Do young belugas play more or less than adult belugas?

Authors

• Winter Saldana, St. Mary's University

Files

Contributor

Hill, Heather (Faculty Mentor)

Digital Publisher

Digital Commons at St. Mary's University

Publication Date

Spring 2026

Keywords

Beluga whales, Play, Well-being, Frequency, Adult, Juvenile

Description

★ The presence of play is used as an indicator of well-being in many species including belugas (Hill et al., 2017; Hill & Ramirez, 2014). ★ Adult and young belugas engage in similar types of play, but the frequency with which belugas play with objects, the actions used during those object play bouts, and the type of materials the objects consist of have not been examined in detail (Hill & Ramirez, 2014). ★ The purpose of this study was to explore if object play exhibited by belugas varied in frequency of play bouts, actions, and materials used by young and adult animals.

Format

pdf

Size

1 poster

City

San Antonio, Texas

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.