Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Natural Sciences

First Advisor

Harley, Heidi

Keywords

bottlenose dolphin, dolphin Umwelt, dolphin sensory systems, dolphin enrichment, dolphin research

Area of Concentration

Biopsychology

Abstract

The Earth is like a machine, its ecosystems like components, and its species like gears; to maintain a healthy Earth, we should look to the gears to promote the Earth’s wellbeing. Here we focus on one species, the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus). The central question is: how can we use what we know about dolphins’ sensory systems to develop methods to further explore the dolphin Umwelt? First, a review of the current literature on dolphin sensory systems provides biological and behavioral information pertaining to individual and cross-modally integrated dolphin auditory, visual, somatosensory, vestibular, chemoreceptive, and magnetoreceptive systems. A four-step procedure for developing dolphin exploratory enrichment methods is then described: 1) understand the dolphin Umwelt and select the exploratory enrichment’s focus; 2) establish baselines; 3) design, implement, and refine a method; and 4) report results. Using this procedure, five potential/theoretical methods are presented that address individual sensory systems and cross-modal integration. Flexible, animal-centric methods can improve human understanding of dolphins by allowing dolphins to show us who they naturally are. We can then make more informed welfare plans for captive dolphins and increase our understanding of how the Earth functions.

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