
Phoebe Thorpe writing for DMAD 07/07/2020
Aquariums use advertising to mislead people into thinking the animals are happy, healthy and enjoy where they live. A common misconception is that cetaceans, especially dolphins, are smiling. In fact they simply just always look happy, it is just the way their face is, even if they were suffering.
“The dolphin smile is nature’s greatest deception. It creates the illusion that they’re always happy.” – Ric O’Barry.

Marine mammals are designed to swim in the open ocean. A wild dolphin can swim on average 100 miles per day! So just imagine the effect being in a tank has on their physical and mental health! The confined space causes stress to the animals. Stress leads to gastric ulcers, stereotypical behaviour like self harm, and disease. In captivity they are placed in different groups with dolphins that have come from different families, which makes communication between them impossible. The combination of not being able to communicate and a confined space leads to the dolphins becoming frustrated and aggressive. In the wild if conflicts occur they are able to swim away from the aggressor, this is not possible in a tank and results in dolphins getting severe wounds. In the wild marine mammals eat live fish, squid and crustaceans, this is not the case in aquariums. Aquariums feed their marine mammals dead, frozen fish and squid. This food has a lower water content than their natural prey as a result they must have a tube put down their throat into their stomach to hydrate them.

When you see dolphins perform you probably think that they have fun when performing tricks and you can train them the same as how you train a dog. A dolphin is a wild animal and a dog is a domestic animal and has been specifically bred to be around humans, a dolphin has not. There is no possible way to train cetaceans, well not in a kind way like the way we train our pets. As there is no real way to train a dolphin the trainers starve them. Through food deprivation the dolphins will do what the performers ask them to because they are desperate for food and it is the only way to satisfy their hunger. The performers call this mistreatment “positive reinforcement” to pull the cover over the truth.
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