The underwater world held one of the most beautiful and wondrous lives with it. As we know, there’s a lot of animals species which lives inside the seas, oceans, and rivers. Let’s names some of sea’ creatures such as turtles with varieties of species, included: sea turtles, green turtles, seahorses, Spanish dancer fishes, octopus, sharks, sea crocodiles, whales, and many more. Then, we are move to freshwater fishes such as catfishes, gourami, cichlid, cyprinids, and others. Wait, I did miss one of the most docile, kind, smart mammal creature that also lived in the sea or ocean; could you guess it, my friends?
Yes, the one and only, our beloved dolphin! One of the most iconic animals on earth that have so many fans around the world. Guess what, our topic today would be around this particular animals, people! As we know, dolphins are a very sensitive animal; did you familiar of the phenomenon of dolphin often stranded on the beach? This phenomenon occurred for several reasons which one of them is the frequency that was made by U.S. Marine experiments which disturb the dolphin.
Due this sensitivity, dolphins are easily distracted emotional and physically do the things that happened around their environment. For your note, these days dolphin has joined on the list of endangered animals around the world. Due dolphin’ survival, people already created an aquarium special for the dolphin which is called dolphinarium. Apparently, there are some issues appeared which effected dolphin’ mental health inside the captivity.
What kind of mental problem? Let’s learn here about 2 facts of dolphin mental health in dolphinarium.
Dolphinarium
What is dolphinarium? Dolphinarium is a special aquarium made for dolphins which it functions either for the public and research. In this place, dolphins was kept in a large pool, and most of the dolphinariums offer to public all kinds of dolphin’ attractions. The same attraction you would see in the parks, such as theme parks, zoos, and marine mammal parks. So, this is a very fun place to visit, right? Yes, it is. It is a very fun place to visit for human – the dolphins? It’s another case.
You need to understand, there would be always problem to keep wild animal inside captivity. The main reason is only one: the environmental. No matter how great and sophisticated the captivity is, it’s never can be compared with what mother nature has made. Wild animals are always attached to “freedom” which mean no limitation of anything. Plus, these animals features was naturally created to adapted with their natural habitat. You can imagine how stress this creature inside the limited tank.
However, without wasting our time, let’s see 2 facts of dolphin mental health in dolphinarium.
1. Dolphin Used to Live in Complex Social Relation in Ocean
Dolphin has a complex and large brain compared to other underwater creatures. Moreover, the brain able to create complex fluid which held an order of societies which formed as three-dimensional liquid movement inside the brain. For the example in bottlenose dolphin, this species has incredible communication skills. This complex brain’ structural give bottlenose ability to build social relationship; they rely on their memories and able to differentiate whom the true a friend and whom a favor.
Therefore, it is safe to say that dolphins need a large social range relationship surround them to keep them sane. This would be the same with a person being locked up – isolated in one place for the rest of his live. I believed you could guess the next thing that would happen to that man – especially associate with his mental health. That is what it feels for dolphins that keep inside a tank.
2. Dolphins have Emotion and Personalities
Dolphin was gifted with limbic system that give the ability to experience varieties of emotions, included: grief, sadness, joy, happiness, frustration, hate, anger, and love. All those basic emotions that human have, dolphins have it. If we connect this fact to our previous fact that this creature able to differentiate and characterize type of social relation by memories, it means this creature capable to learn their own situation inside the captivity.
They understand that they were nothing but custody; it means dolphins able to understand the reason they were being kept is for entertainment. What it feels like to know that you’ve been kept for this long just for someone else pleasure? Frustration, grief, and depression are the most aggressive killer besides physical illness.