Parental behavior of the beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) in natural environment

Krasnova, V. V.; Chernetskiĭ, A D; Zheludkova, A I; Bel’kovich, V. M.

doi:10.1134/s1062359014040062

Cited by 37 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(20 reference statements)

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“…A unique form of mouth-to-mouth social interactions, preliminarily considered a form of play, have been documented between beluga calves (Connor & Peterson, 1994;Dietrich, Garza, Hill, & Aibel, 2013;Krasnova, Chernetsky, Zheludkova, & Bel'kovich, 2014). This form of mouth-tomouth interaction is highly cooperative.…”

Section: Social Playmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to play: A review and theoretical investigation of the developmental mechanisms and functions of cetacean play

2017

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Play is a behavioral phenomenon most commonly observed in the young of both solitary and social species. Documentation of play in cetaceans varies across species and settings. Cetacean play behavioral repertoires include a broad range of actions, such as the manipulation of diverse objects, blowing bubbles, chasing conspecifics, and swimming in spirals through the water. As is common in research on animal play, cetacean play has been grouped into categories by its form, including locomotor play, object play, and different variations of social play, such as affiliative games, play fighting, and socio-sexual play. Research has primarily focused on recording the topography of cetacean play and the demographics of the individuals engaging in play. However, these classifications are insufficient to address the possible developmental and societal functions of cetacean play behaviors, or the mechanisms with which play behaviors are spread between conspecifics and acquired by young members of cetacean populations. This article applies several developmental and social learning theories in order to organize current knowledge and guide future research.

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Section: Social Playmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to play: A review and theoretical investigation of the developmental mechanisms and functions of cetacean play

2017

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“…a healthy individual gives attention to an injured or dead one, as summarized in [4]) and is usually seen as a consequence of the cooperative, succouring and protective nature of social mammals [4][5][6][7][8]. Considering that the individual receiving this attention is often an offspring, some authors suggested that this behaviour could be a consequence of the strong mother-offspring bond [9][10][11][12], or a revival attempt through violent manipulation of the bodies [13,14]. In certain cases where the dead or dying individuals were adults, a sexual component and/or a dominance display is involved as observers recorded & 2018 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social relationships and death-related behaviour in aquatic mammals: a systematic review

Reggente

Papale

McGinty

et al. 2018

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Some aquatic mammals appear to care for their dead, whereas others abandon their live offspring when conditions are unfavourable. This incredible variety in behaviours suggests the importance of comparing and contrasting mechanisms driving death-related behaviours among these species. We reviewed 106 cases of aquatic mammals (81 cetaceans and 25 non-cetaceans) reacting to a death event, and extrapolated 'participant' (, , and ) and 'social' characteristics (, ,, and) from published and unpublished literature. A multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) was performed to explore the relationships between these characteristics and death-related behaviours, with species clustered based on MCA scores. Results showed that both cetaceans and non-cetaceans react to death but in different ways. Non-cetaceans, characterized by a short maternal investment, were observed to protect the dead (defending it from external attacks), while cetaceans spent much longer with their offspring and display carrying (hauling, spinning, mouthing with the carcass and diving with it) and breathing-related (lifting and sinking the carcass) activities with the dead generally in association with other conspecifics. Our work emphasizes the need of increased documentation of death-related cases around the world to improve our understanding of aquatic mammals and their responses to death.This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolutionary thanatology: impacts of the dead on the living in humans and other animals'.

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“…Other interactions with non-cetacean marine life, however, are known-or were credibly interpreted by the source authors-to represent play, socio-sexual display, tool-use, feedingrelated behaviour or other functions inconsistent with the hypothesis of surrogates (e.g. Würsig et al, 1989;Smolker et al, 1997;Krützen et al, 2005;Fertl and Fulling, 2007;Martin et al, 2008;Allen et al, 2011Allen et al, , 2017Patterson and Mann, 2011;Araújo and Wang, 2012;Krasnova et al, 2014;Barber, 2016). Finally, several cases of G. macrorhynchus carrying dead sea lions Zalophus californianus (Shane, 1994) or fish-eating O. orca carrying dead salmon (Whitehead et al, 2004) may be fads, confer status or other advantages to the carriers (Shane, 1994;Whitehead et al, 2004;Allen et al, 2017), or possible prey caching.…”

Section: Attentiveness To Non-conspecifics and Inanimate Objectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In such cases, the PA may not be certain that the other individual is dead. An inanimate conspecific can sometimes be revived by forceful manipulation (Krasnova et al, 2014) and the PA may act with the…”

Section: Do Cetaceans Recognise or Comprehend Death?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1), or in the mouth (Reggente et al, 2016;. Cetaceans have been documented carrying a dead and decomposing individual for up to about one week (Porter, 2002;Ritter, 2007;Krasnova et al, 2014). While present understanding of cetacean behaviour toward the dead is poor, and risks of overinterpretation are high (Anderson, 2016), some responses to deceased individuals-primarily involving adult females and their dead calves-have been interpreted as expressions of bereavement resulting from the breaking of strong social bonds .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Whale and dolphin behavioural responses to dead conspecifics

Bearzi¹,

Kerem

Furey

et al. 2018

Zoology

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The scientific study of death across animal taxa-comparative thanatology-investigates how animals respond behaviourally, physiologically and psychologically to dead conspecifics, and the processes behind such responses. Several species of cetaceans have been long known to care for, attend to, be aroused by, or show interest in dead or dying individuals. We investigated patterns and variation in cetacean responses to dead conspecifics across cetacean taxa based on a comprehensive literature review. We analysed 78 records reported between 1970 and 2016, involving 20 of the 88 extant cetacean species. We adopted a weighted comparative approach to take observation effort into account and found that odontocetes (toothed cetaceans) were much more likely than mysticetes (baleen whales) to attend to dead conspecifics. Dolphins (Delphinidae) had the greatest occurrence of attentive behaviour (92.3% of all records), with a weighed attendance index 18 times greater than the average of all other cetacean families. Two dolphin genera, Sousa and Tursiops, constituted 55.1% of all cetacean records (N=43) and showed the highest incidence of attentive behaviour. Results of analyses intended to investigate the reasons behind these differences suggested that encephalisation may be an important predictor, consistent with the "social brain" hypothesis. Among attending individuals or groups of known sex (N=28), the majority (75.0%) were adult females with dead calves or juveniles (possibly their own offspring, with exceptions), consistent with the strong mother-calf bond, or, in a few cases, with the bond between mothers and other females in the group. The remaining records (25.0%) involved males either showing sexual interest in a dead adult or subadult, or carrying a dead calf in the presence of females. Because an inanimate individual is potentially rescuable, responses to dead conspecifics-especially by females-can be explained at least in part by attempts to revive and protect, having a clear adaptive value. In some cases such responses are followed by apparently maladaptive behaviour such as the long-term carrying of, or standing by, a decomposed carcass, similar to observations of certain terrestrial mammals. Among the possible explanations for the observed cetacean behavioural responses to dead conspecifics are strong attachment resulting in a difficulty of "letting go"-possibly related to grieving-or perhaps individuals failing to recognise or accept that an offspring or companion has died. Our current understanding is challenged by small sample size, incomplete descriptions, and lack of information on the physiology and neural processes underpinning the observed behaviour. We provide research recommendations that would improve such understanding.

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Parental behavior of the beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) in natural environment

Cited by 37 publications

References 16 publications

Learning to play: A review and theoretical investigation of the developmental mechanisms and functions of cetacean play

Learning to play: A review and theoretical investigation of the developmental mechanisms and functions of cetacean play

Social relationships and death-related behaviour in aquatic mammals: a systematic review

Whale and dolphin behavioural responses to dead conspecifics

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