Serres Agathe, Delfour Fabienne
Paris 13 University, Villetaneuse, France.
Parc Astérix, Paris 13 University, Villetaneuse, France.
Zoo Biol. 2017 Mar;36(2):99-111. doi: 10.1002/zoo.21355. Epub 2017 Feb 21.
Social play varies among species and individuals and changes in frequency and duration during ontogeny. This type of play is modulated by environmental changes (e.g., resource availability). In captivity, cetaceans and their environment are managed by humans, and training sessions and/or public presentations punctuate the day as well as other frequent or occasional events. There is a lack of research on the effects of environmental events that occur in captivity and might affect dolphins' behavior. We studied the context in which nine bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) played socially and the events that could potentially impact this social interaction. The dolphins' social play behavior was significantly more frequent and lasted longer in the morning than in the afternoon and was present before and after interactions with their trainers with a non-significant tendency to be more frequent before and after a training session than a public presentation. In an experimental paradigm using familiar environmental enrichment, our results demonstrated that environmental enrichment tended to increase social play duration whereas temporary noisy construction work around the pool and display of agonistic behaviors by members of the group significantly decreased it. These results contribute to better understand the social play distribution in captive bottlenose dolphins and the impact of different events within their daily lives. Since play decreases or disappears when animals are facing unfavorable conditions, the evaluation of social play may relate to the animals' current well-being. We suggest that social play has potential to become an indicator of bottlenose dolphins' current welfare state.
社交玩耍在不同物种和个体之间存在差异，并且在个体发育过程中，其频率和持续时间会发生变化。这种玩耍类型会受到环境变化（例如资源可用性）的调节。在圈养环境中，鲸类动物及其环境由人类管理，训练课程和/或公众展示贯穿一天，还有其他频繁或偶尔发生的事件。目前缺乏关于圈养环境中发生的、可能影响海豚行为的环境事件的研究。我们研究了9只宽吻海豚（Tursiops truncatus）进行社交玩耍的背景以及可能影响这种社交互动的事件。海豚的社交玩耍行为在上午比下午明显更频繁且持续时间更长，并且在与训练员互动之前和之后都会出现，在训练课程前后比在公众展示前后有更频繁的趋势，但不显著。在一个使用熟悉的环境丰富物的实验范式中，我们的结果表明，环境丰富物倾向于增加社交玩耍的持续时间，而泳池周围临时的嘈杂建筑工程以及群体成员的攻击性行为展示则显著减少了社交玩耍的持续时间。这些结果有助于更好地理解圈养宽吻海豚的社交玩耍分布以及日常生活中不同事件的影响。由于当动物面临不利条件时玩耍会减少或消失，社交玩耍的评估可能与动物当前的健康状况有关。我们建议社交玩耍有可能成为宽吻海豚当前福利状态的一个指标。
