Our study suggests AAV, which more closely resembles the conscious intermittent respiratory pattern phenotype of dolphins, improves ventilation and pulmonary function in the anesthetized dolphin. Future studies should evaluate the cardiopulmonary effects of neutral buoyancy...
The past several decades have witnessed significant improvement in the physical welfare of marine mammals in zoos and aquariums. Over that same time period, research has revealed complex cognitive abilities in at least some of...
Ensuring high standards of animal welfare is not only an ethical duty for zoos and aquariums, but it is also essential to achieve their conservation, education, and research goals. While for some species, animal welfare...
Social tolerance is an essential feature of social life that can determine the good functioning of a group of animals. Play behaviors, like social play and playing with objects, are frequently associated with positive emotional...
Human activities are increasingly impacting our oceans and the focus tends to be on their environmental impacts, rather than consequences for animal welfare. Global shipping density has quadrupled since 1992. Unsurprisingly, increased levels of vessel...
Under human care, dolphins’ activities are alternated with moments of breaks that should allow them to behave as they want. However, scheduled activities such as training, feeding and playing with objects can affect dolphins’ behaviours...
Qualitative ratings are increasingly used to assess animal welfare. We investigated the associations between daily caretakers’ ratings of individuals’ behavioral style, behavior during free time, participation during training sessions, and environmental variables in captive Yangtze...
Anticipatory behavior describes the actions taken to prepare for an upcoming event. It is considered a promising tool for welfare assessment, but it is not fully applied in zoos and other facilities. This is probably...
The preference tests have made a great contribution to promoting animal welfare. However, they are not always easily applicable and have some criticalities. Recently the anticipatory behavior has been used to detect the animals’ preference...
Although the use of fecal glucocorticoid metabolite (FGCM) measurements as non-invasive biomarkers for the stress response in mammals has increased, few studies have been conducted in odontocetes. We investigated if animal sex, age, pregnancy or...