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Using Personality Traits To Predict Pectoral Fin Contact Initiation Role In Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus), Riley Paige Macgregor Dec 2018

Using Personality Traits To Predict Pectoral Fin Contact Initiation Role In Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus), Riley Paige Macgregor

Master's Theses

Contact with the pectoral fin facilitates formation and maintenance of social relationships between dolphins (Dudzinski & Ribic, 2017). Additionally, several studies have shown that bottlenose dolphins have distinct personalities that are consistent across time and situation (e.g., Highfill & Kuczaj, 2007; Kuczaj, Highfill, & Byerly, 2012), and it has been suggested that these individual differences (i.e., personality) may influence tactile behavior exchanges. The current study therefore aimed to determine if bottlenose dolphin personality traits predict whether and how dolphins initiate contact as a rubber or rubbee during pectoral fin contact exchanges, and to identify whether the effects of personality traits …


An Analysis Of Innovate Training With Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus), Raymond John Van Steyn Jul 2018

An Analysis Of Innovate Training With Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus), Raymond John Van Steyn

Theses and Dissertations

The National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland conducted a training program in 2014 to develop a gestural command for their dolphins called “innovate”. This training paradigm was developed to resemble the seminal research by Pryor, Haag and O’Reilly (1969), as well as more recent efforts of Braslau-Schneck (1993) and Kuczaj and Eskelinen (2014) of training dolphins to offer “creative” behaviors not developed through conventional methods of behavioral modification, such as shaping. The goal of the present study was to observe records taken during the National Aquarium’s training procedure as well as data collected ~3 years after said training in order to …


Patterns Of Interactive System Use By Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus), Stephanie Bousseau Apr 2018

Patterns Of Interactive System Use By Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus), Stephanie Bousseau

Theses and Dissertations

In the 1970s through the 1990s, artificial languages and codes were being used as a window into understanding different species’ cognitive abilities and to afford them choice and control in captive environments. In a study by Reiss and McCowan (1993), two young captive born male bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and their mothers were given an underwater interactive system that afforded them some degree of choice and control in obtaining specific contingencies. The dolphins’ use of specific visual elements presented via on a 3 x 3 key matrix resulted in the production of computer generated whistles followed by the …