Dolphins!!

life style of dolphins.

Mythology

• The Roman and Greek Mythology put pictures of dolphins in their art

• Sailors always looked for dolphins for a smooth voyage and for good luck

Kinds and Names

• Wide sided, Bottle nosed, and common

• Males-Bulls

• Females-Cows

• Babies-Calves

• Herd-lots of dolphins

• Shark-Enemy

• Life expectency-25 years

Pregnancy and Babies

• Mate in spring

• Babies-Calves

• 10-12 months

• Babies born one at a time

• 1/3 as long their mother

• Males take no part in taking care for the babies after they are born

Bodies

• Torpedo Shaped bodies

• Paddle shaped flippers

• Tail-Flukes

• Lungs

• Blowhole

• Lots of teeth

• Dorsal fin on back

How They Move

• Slap flukes up and down

• Use flippers to make sharp turns and to stop

• Speeds- 20 to 25 miles per hour

Echolocation

• Use to know where objects are in the water

• Locates by clicking sounds

• The Melon, a part in the head, directs the noise forward

• Sounds reflecting off the object

• By listening to the sound they determine where the object is

Communication

• Whistles and Clicks {phonations}

• Blowhole

• Slapping there flukes on the surface of the water

Diving

• Most do not dive deep

• Some are trained to dive 1,000 feet

• When dive their lungs collapse and heart rate slows down

• These actions help the dolphin adjust to the pressure

Training

• Most are bottle nosed dolphins

• By watching others they invent their own behavior pattern

• Jump through hoops, throw balls through nets, walk backwards on their flukes

Hunters

• In 1972 passed law limiting killing

• Several nations kill them

• Most responsible are the tuna fishing people including Japan and Sri Lanka

• Accidents drown them, such as getting caught in fishing nets

• The hunters eat the meat

Objectives

• Taxonomy

• Anatomy

• Restraint and handling

• Training

• Physical exam

• Signs of illness

• Diagnostic modalities

TAXONOMY

• Carnivora

– Polar Bears

– Sea Otters

– Pinnipeds

• Sea Lions and Fur Seals – Otarids

• Seals - Phocids

• Walruses - Odobenids

• Sirenia

– Manatees

– Dugongs

• Cetaceans

– Untoothed Mysticetes - i.e. Gray whales

– Toothed Odontocetes – i.e. Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises

No Pinnae!!

TAXONOMY

• Carnivora

– Polar Bears

– Sea Otters

– Pinnipeds

• Sea Lions and Fur Seals – Otarids

• Seals - Phocids

• Walruses - Odobenids

• Sirenia

– Manatees

– Dugongs

• Cetaceans

– Untoothed Mysticetes - i.e. Gray whales

– Toothed Odontocetes – i.e. Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises

TAXONOMY

• Carnivora

– Polar Bears

– Sea Otters

– Pinnipeds

• Sea Lions and Fur Seals – Otarids

• Seals - Phocids

• Walruses - Odobenids

• Sirenia

– Manatees

– Dugongs

• Cetaceans

– Untoothed Mysticetes - i.e. Gray whales

– Toothed Odontocetes – i.e. Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises

ANATOMY

Which one is A DOLPHIN?

RESTRAINT AND HANDLING - WILD CAPTURE

• Equipment

– Nets and ropes

– Stretchers

– Pulleys

– Manpower

TRAINING

• Reduces risk of injury and stress

• Important behaviors

– Tail fluke

– Genital slit

– Urination

• TRAINING IS KEY!

RESTRAINT AND HANDLING

• Restraint out of water

– More likely to injure himself than you

– Stay close to his body

– Be careful not to restrict his breathing

– Place hand on rostrum to keep mouth closed

– Keep tail under control at all times!!

PHYSICAL EXAM

• Health

• Venipuncture

• Auscultation and percussion

• Injections

Health

• Attitude

– Interested in and follows people

– Rests by maintaining neutral buoyancy

• Eyes

– Tears very thick

– Pupil shape

• Mouth

– 80-104 total teeth

– Clear mucus glands

• Skin

– No sebaceous glands

– Easily lacerated or contused

Health

• Blowhole

– Fresh to slightly “fishy” breath odor

– Occasional white, foamy fluid

• Body Condition

– No “neck”

– Plump

• Stool

– Greenish-tan; watery

– Occasionally may float

• Urine

– Light to dark amber, clear

Blood
(Venipuncture)

• Needle inserted at a perpendicular angle to

the keel

• The blood of dolphins has a prolonged clotting time (lacks factor 12)

Heart and Lungs (Auscultation and percussion)

• Conventional stethoscope in plastic sleeve

• Placed over lower third of thorax just caudal and slightly ventral to the pectoral fin

Heart and Lungs (Auscultation and percussion)

• Respiratory

– Rate 1-4 times per minute

– Measured over a 5 minute period

• Heart

– Rate is generally 40-130 bpm

– Sinus arrhythmia is common

Injecting

• IV injections

• Subcutaneous injections

– Possible and sometimes done for fluid therapy

• IM injections

– Between the dorsal and lateral spinous processes of the vertebrae

SICK ??…

• Poor appetite

• Evident weight loss

• Unusual behavior

• Vomiting or diarrhea

• Discharges from the

blowhole or nostrils

• Foul breath

• Discolored or cloudy urine

• Skin damage

COMMON MEDICAL CONDITIONS

• Skin wounds

• Bacterial infections

• Fungal infections

• Dental disease

• Gastric Ulcers

• Gastric foreign objects

DIAGNOSTIC MODALITIES

• Radiographs

• Ultrasound

• Endoscopy

• CT Scan

• MRI

QUESTIONS?

Dolphin Intelligence

A Study of the Bottlenose Dolphin

First…
A quick look at dolphins
in their environment

What is intelligence?

• Intelligence

– A. the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations

– B. the act of understanding

– C. the ability to manipulate one’s environment

Judging Intelligence

• Type of intelligence test must be concentrated on the specific species.

• Darwin claimed, “intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the thing they need to survive”.

• Others claim it is a matter of communication, still others claim it is based on brain size and architecture.

• There is a major difference between intelligence and instinct.

General Information

• Captive dolphins reveal they are capable of learning artificial tasks, mimicking behavior, and the ability to react to following a set of commands.

• Most dolphin experiments do show they have primary skills necessary to support understanding and use of language.

• The sounds that dolphins make constitute a language of their own.

Testing for Intelligence

Encephalization Quotient (EQ) testing: Compares the size of an animal brain to the size of its body.

• Cortical Folding: The more folds and surface area in the brain= greater intelligence level.

• Neocortical Folding: source of intellectual stimulation in humans.

Reason

• A. the power of comprehending, inferring, or thinking especially in orderly rational ways

• B. proper exercise of the mind, the sum of the intellectual powers

Reason - Responding to New Situations

• Expanding on simple trained activities

• Supersonic Whistling

• Trash collecting

• Gull baiting

• Human manipulation?

Behavior shows…

• The dolphins have a sense of the future and will delay gratification

• Realized the system of rewards, and in effect, have trained the humans

Responding to new situations

• dolphins responded appropriately the very first time they were exposed to television, in contrast to chimps

• Of course, an understanding of TV is of little use in the wild, but the ability to respond to new situations has huge implications

Manipulation of the Environment

• Manipulation

– A. to influence or manage deviously

– B. influence skillfully to one’s advantage.

Is our definition of manipulation applicable to defining the manipulation of dolphins?

Manipulation vs. Instinct

• The ability of dolphins to manipulate is very different than in other animals.

• The use of environmental manipulation is seen most blatantly in their hunting methods.

Dolphin Hunting

• Dolphin Herd Hunting

• Connection of the Herd through the use of language.

• Individual hunting techniques

Hunting in Herds

• Three step process: searching, detecting, and catching

• Use of “scouts” close to shore to detect food

• Herd formations for catching fish

• Dolphins aren’t selfish hunters

• Different formations for different types of fish species.

The 3 Basic Steps in Herd Hunting

• 1. Searching- done by the entire herd

• 2. Detection- accomplished usually by one or two dolphins.

• 3. Catching- entire herd congregates to the food source.

Herd Formations

• Dolphins use a few different formations to gather fish once they are detected.

• Some formations include

– A. the Carousel

– B. the Kettle

– C. the Wall Method

Horizontal Carousel

Vertical Carousel

Wall Formation

Some other methods

These methods of manipulating prey seem simple enough, but how do they know when to make a formation and which one to use?

These methods of manipulating prey seem simple enough, but how do they know when to make a formation and which one to use?

LANGUAGE!

Connection of Herd through Language

• Dolphins learn sound and language through visual identification

• Dolphins use parental adult tutoring

• Use adaptive strategies for response to detected information

• Use of language semantics in herd communication

Talking to each other

• Dolphins can actually perfectly mimic each others voices. Which is their way of calling to each other by name.

• Is it possible that dolphins are basically calling out commands to each other when surrounding their prey?

Dolphins are visual learners

• Dolphins learn to remember language through visual targets

• It is thought that adult dolphins teach the young dolphins their language

• They use this language to:

– A. call to each when in need of help

– B. corral prey

– C. capture prey

Solitary Hunting

• Sometimes dolphins act alone even when other dolphins are nearby

• Drive fish toward shore or a fishing net

• Sudden change of direction

• Fish stay close to ocean surface

• Dolphins rotate body position when catching fish. Use adaptive strategies

Attack against the Shore

Some dolphin humour

• Dolphins pluck tail feathers from unsuspecting pelican, then swim away

• Dolphins mock grouper. They place squid in front of grouper and snatch away the food right before the grouper can grab it.

Why hunting is manipulation

• Dolphins hunt with language to gain advantage over their prey.

• They have the ability to understand what strategies to use against specific fish.

• So, would you say that dolphins “influence skillfully to their advantage?”

Dolphin Communication

• Whistles, squeaks, moans, and clicks

• Physical contact

• Body movement

• Jumps

Jumps

Current Research

• Answering Questions

Memory and Instinct

• Studying dolphins in both natural and laboratory environments provide a more complete understanding of their cognitive characteristics

Instinct:

• An inborn pattern of behavior that is characteristic of a species and is often a response to specific environmental stimuli

– Nearly every natural instinct the dolphin has is constrained when forced to live in captivity

• The mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience

Dolphins Memory:

1) Able to recall features of their environment and

features of their actions independently of one another.

2) Repeating goes beyond simple accessing memories of

past events.

Recalling and Repeating

actions on command

Case Study:

Teaching dolphins artificial sign language,

in which gestures are like words and

sequences of gestures are like sentences.

Dolphins are capable of processing two fundamentals of language:

1) semantic component

2) syntactic component

In Conclusion…

• Are we closer in intelligence to dolphins than we first thought?

• We know that dolphins are intelligent, but just how effective are we in testing their true intelligence?

• The more we learn about these awesome creatures, the more they continue to amaze us with their abilities, mentally, socially, and physically.

Matching-to-Sample by an Echolocating Dolphin

Introduction

• Do animals have a short-term memory like humans have?

• Delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) is a method used to study animal STM.

• DMTS = subject is presented with a to-be-remembered item, and after a delay, several items are presented. The subject must select the item that matches the TBR item.

More Introduction:

• This study looked at the strategies the dolphin used to do the DMTS task.

• They chose to use a dolphin because of echolocation.

• Echolocation = signals or clicks by the dolphin.

• The had previously used pigeons, but it was hard to identify the strategies used.

Method

• One adult, male dolphin was used that had a lot of experience with DMTS.

• Dolphin wore eyecups, so he could not see.

• They gave him a tone to signal him to go under water and prepare for the trial.

• A screen was put under water, so he could not echolocate on the item until it was in place.

• The items used with the dolphin were a PVC tube open at both ends, a solid aluminum cone, and a water-filled stainless steel sphere.

Procedure:

• The screen was raised on the TBR item, and the screen was put back over it when he had stopped echolocating for 5 seconds.

• The dolphin was then given the three items to choose from.

• He made his choice by touching 1 of the 3 response wands (a rubber ball on a PVC pipe). A wand was placed in front of each item.

• When he made a correct choice, he was reinforced with 3 fish.

Results

• 94.5% accurate in choosing the correct item.

• Most errors were made on the cone and the sphere.

• Errors were also made when items were on the right side.

• The dolphin echolocated on the items from left to right.

Graph of Results

• The dolphin made more clicks on the cone and the sphere.

Discussion

• The task was easy for the dolphin based on his high level of accuracy.

• The dolphin echolcated on the sphere and the cone the most, which were also the items he missed most.

• The cone and sphere could have been more difficult because they have small reflective faces.

• The item on the right may have been missed due to previous training. (He had been trained with only 2 items to choose from).

• The dolphin also echolocated from left to right because of previous training.

Feeding Programs:
Bottlenose Dolphins

Background

<One of largest dolphin species

<Weighs approximately 200 kg and grows up to 3. 7 m

<Dives to about 300 m and can jump to 6 m out of the water

<Life span of about 30 years

<Gestation period of 12 months

<Lactation period of 18 months

<Calves weaned at 2 years

<Found offshore or on coastally in temporal or tropical waters

Social Structure

<Very social animals

<Three groups determined by family relationships, gender, and age :

• All adult males

• Mixed gender adults

• Adult females with their most recent offspring

<Usually in small pods of up to 12, many pods may congregate together

Feeding Techniques

<Feed in small groups or independently (in same area)

<Circle fish schools in groups

<Sometimes trap prey against shore or in shallow water

<Use bottom grubbing techniques

Prey Information

<Prey size seems dependent on size of dolphin

<Are opportunistic feeders - feeding on various prey items

<Will show a preference for foods if given a choice

<Preferred prey is mullet, silver biddy’s, sea perch and squid

<Consume 15-30 pounds (8-15 kg) of food each day

Early Interactions

<70 A.D.

• Montpellier, France

• Dolphins herded fish into nets of fishermen who would then reward the dolphins with some of the fish caught.

<109 A.D.

• Games and tricks between boy and dolphin

• Became tourist attraction, led to problems associated with overcrowding

• People in town killed the dolphin thinking it would solve their problems.

Example - Tangalooma

<Tourist resort in southeast Queensland, Australia

<First attempt at establishing a feeding station was in 1989

<Trials to bring dolphins into the bay 3 different ways:

< Getting them to follow trawlers (not successful)

< Feeding them from small inflatable boats (not very successful)

< Feeding them from around the jetty (somewhat successful)

<These trials didn’t work

<Second attempt in 1992 – dolphins only fed from the wharf at the resort

<The second attempt was successful and the first dolphins to feed from the wharf were a mother and her calf

Example – Monkey Mia

• Began with single dolphin hand fed from an anchored boat

• Dolphin began feeding from other boats and soon other dolphins joined

• Tourism increased – approx. 100 000 visits per year

• Management practices in place

• Study found that 36% survival for hand fed, and 67% survival for self providing young

Human Impacts

Risks:

• Physical injuries caused by dolphin aggression:

– Attacks with flippers

– Body slams

– Severe bites

• Cases in which people were forced away from shore and prevented from returning

Benefits:

• Entertainment value

Dolphins Impacts

Risks:

• Deliberate physical harm by humans

• Vulnerability to contaminated or inappropriate foods

• Feeding may alter foraging patterns

• Dependency on dead fish – leads to injuries by fishing hooks

• Higher calf mortality found in hand fed individuals

Benefits:

• Better guarantee for food availability

• Seem to enjoy interaction- jumps, tricks, playfulness

Pro Dolphin Feeding

• Increase tourism in park

• Economic benefits

• Increase awareness about dolphins

• Promote positive interactions between humans and dolphins

Against Dolphin Feeding

• Increase in tourist activity

– Destruction of dolphin habitat

– Environmental pollution and contamination

• Could affect natural foraging of dolphins

• Increase stress for dolphins

• Negative effects for humans and dolphins as mentioned on the previous slides

Necessary management practices:

• Physical – control tourist behavior by restricting access to dolphins

• Regulatory – rules to control tourist behavior through threats of punishment for noncompliance

• Educational – inform and encourage tourists for voluntary control of behavior appropriate to the environment

Conclusion

• Park administration could go ahead and expand operations to include dolphin feeding since it will economically and socially benefit the park.

• To minimize risks the park must:

- Choose reliable fish source

- Make a designated zone for feeding only

- Feed only at specific times

- Enforce strict feeding rules for tourists (number of people in water, no loud noises, etc.)

• Risks are potential, not well documented

• No significant damage to population as yet

“Innocent until proven guilty” assumed okay until studies prove otherwise

• Overall-- More studies should be done but until then:

– Implementation of physical, regulatory and educational aspects is essential

Questions???

Dolphins

Vertebrate / Mammal

o The dolphin is a mammal that is born with little hair.

o A mammal is an animal that is born with hair and also feed milk to there young

o Also dolphins are vertebrates.

o A vertebrate is an animal that has a backbones.

What Dolphins Eat

ØDolphins eat fishes or squid.

How Dolphins Sleep

oDolphins sleep with one half of a brain and with one eye closed.

Different from others

oThey are different from others because they have a way of communication by going one way and another dolphin goes the other way.

Where Dolphins Live

oDolphins can be found in virtually all in the seas, and in the Amazon River.

Dolphins Teeth

oDolphins teeth are small.

oThere teeth are also sharp.

Dolphin Behavior

oDolphins behavior is known mostly from studies on captive individuals, primarily of the bottle – nose dolphin.