Date of Award

2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Harley, Heidi

Area of Concentration

Biopsychology

Abstract

Enrichment can be defined as the addition of stimuli to an animal’s environment that aims to enhance the animal’s physical and mental conditions, as well as to reduce stress. Enrichment has been utilized and researched in zoos and aquariums all over the world for years. However, not many studies have focused on the individual across multiple contexts. This study focuses on individual differences in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatas) in response to various environmental enrichment classes, as well as the dolphins’ levels of participation with human interaction versus no human interaction, ingestibles versus no ingestibles, and before versus after fish-reinforced training sessions. Enrichment sessions were conducted with seven dolphins (6 females, 1 male) at Dolphins Plus Bayside in Key Largo, Florida. Enrichment classes included Object, Human Interaction/Object, Human Interaction/Ingestible, Human Interaction, and Human Interaction/Object/Ingestible. Duration of participation was designated as no (0%) participation, some (10%-25%) of the session time, moderate (25%-50%), and high (50%-100%). We found that dolphins participated more during sessions that involved humans than when they did not, during sessions that involved ingestibles than when they did not and participated more before versus after training sessions. We also found that dolphins interacted more with Human interaction/Object/Ingestible sessions than any other. Individual differences in response to enrichment within the dolphins varied. This study highlights the usefulness of evaluating individual responses to enrichment sessions across contexts.

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