Delfour Fabienne, Vaicekauskaite Ruta, García-Párraga Daniel, Pilenga Cristina, Serres Agathe, Brasseur Isabelle, Pascaud Ana, Perlado-Campos Enrique, Sánchez-Contreras Guillermo J, Baumgartner Katrin, Monreal-Pawlowsky Tania
Parc Asterix, 60128 Plailly, France.
Marine Research Institute, Klaipeda University, 92294 Klaipeda, Lithuania.
Animals (Basel). 2021 Jun 8;11(6):1715. doi: 10.3390/ani11061715.
In the recent past, animal welfare studies have tried to determine the best animal welfare measures and indicators. Expression of behavioural diversity is considered a potential positive welfare indicator, and to the authors' knowledge, it has not been validated nor studied in cetaceans. For the first time, a behavioural diversity study on bottlenose dolphins groups was conducted at six European facilities. The study was carried out by the animal care staff, biologists and veterinarians and included 54 dolphins housed in several group compositions at the different participating facilities. The goal of our study was to analyse behavioural diversity in bottlenose dolphins at the group level to investigate how particular factors might impact the diversity of behaviours within the group and to discuss its implications for dolphin welfare assessments. Eight factors (i.e., "observer location", "number of individuals", "age class", "sex", "social grouping", "presence/absence of leading male", "presence/absence of visitors" and "enrichment provision") impacted the behavioural diversity of the observed groups, while no significant impact of the factors "time of day" and "activity before/after observation" could be found. Our study showed the feasibility of this kind of approach for cetaceans under professional care and the relevance to considering this parameter in dolphin welfare studies, despite certain limitations that warrant further research.
最近，动物福利研究试图确定最佳的动物福利措施和指标。行为多样性的表达被认为是一种潜在的积极福利指标，据作者所知，它尚未在鲸类动物中得到验证或研究。首次在六个欧洲设施中对宽吻海豚群体进行了行为多样性研究。该研究由动物护理人员、生物学家和兽医进行，包括54只海豚，它们以不同的群体组合饲养在不同的参与设施中。我们研究的目的是分析宽吻海豚群体层面的行为多样性，调查特定因素如何影响群体内行为的多样性，并讨论其对海豚福利评估的影响。八个因素（即“观察者位置”、“个体数量”、“年龄组”、“性别”、“社会群体”、“主导雄性的有无”、“访客的有无”和“丰富度提供”）影响了观察到的群体的行为多样性，而未发现“一天中的时间”和“观察前/后的活动”这两个因素有显著影响。我们的研究表明，这种方法对于专业护理下的鲸类动物是可行的，并且在海豚福利研究中考虑这个参数具有相关性，尽管存在某些局限性，需要进一步研究。
