Do dolphins in captivity behave differently from dolphins in the wild?
If so, in what ways? I’m going to qualify this answer again and say that in the facilities where our member institutions have dolphins, I’ll say no, they don’t. We have high water quality and larger facilities, and the dolphins are highly enriched, and they’re engaging in behaviors just like they do in the wild. Another thing that happens in AZA-accredited institutions is that they live longer in captivity than they do in the wild because they’re not subject to the parasites, the predators and the endless need to forage for food in order to find what they simply need to metabolize. That all adds up to higher longevity in our exhibits. The qualification has to do with dolphins in facilities that are not AZA-accredited. I can’t really speak to those, but I have seen dolphins in facilities that are atrocious. They’re too small, the animals are not enriched and they behave dramatically differently from dolphins in the wild. They are sometimes lethargic. It’s not unlike seeing a human who’s
