Social Behaviour of Captive Belugas, Delphinapterus Leucas.

Focal-animal sampling techniques developed for investigating social behaviour of terrestrial animals were adapted for studying captive belugas, providing quantitative descriptions of social relationships among individuals. Five groups of captive belugas were observed, allowing a cross-sectional view...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Recchia, Cheri A.
Other Authors: WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION MA
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 1994
Subjects:
Biology
Psychology
*SIZES(DIMENSIONS)
*WHALES
*BEHHAVIOR
SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION
HIGH RATE
PATTERNS
VISUAL INSPECTION
ACOUSTICS
ANIMALS
STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
EARTH(PLANET)
ADULTS
SPECTROGRAPHY
OCEANOGRAPHY
DELPHINAPTERUS LEUCAS
CAPTIVE BELUGAS
Beluga*
Delphinapterus leucas
Online Access:http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA289549
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA289549
Description
Summary:Focal-animal sampling techniques developed for investigating social behaviour of terrestrial animals were adapted for studying captive belugas, providing quantitative descriptions of social relationships among individuals. Five groups of captive belugas were observed, allowing a cross-sectional view of sociality in groups of diverse sizes and compositions. Inter-individual distances were used to quantify patterns of spatial association. A set of social behaviours for which actor and recipient could be identified was defined to characterize dyadic interactions. The mother-calf pair spent more time together, and interacted more often than adults. The calf maintained proximity with his mother; larger adults generally maintained proximity with smaller adults. Among adults, larger groups performed more kinds of behaviours and interacted at higher rates than smaller groups. Within dyads, the larger whale performed more aggressive behaviours and the smaller whale more submissive behaviours. Clear dominance relations existed in three groups with larger whales dominant to smaller whales. Vocalizations of three groups were classified subjectively, based on aural impressions and visual inspection of spectrograms but most signals appeared graded. Statistical analyses of measured acoustic features confirmed subjective impressions that vocalizations could not be classified into discrete and homogeneous categories.

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