Dolphins can smile, and beluga whales scare children through the glass? How many lies are there in the aquarium?

As the National Day approaches, the aquarium has started intensive marketing and promotion. In the publicity, the aquarium is a happy world, where smiling dolphins welcome everyone, curious white whales interact with children through the glass, and there are even singing whales and dolphins and bowing polar bears... However, these are actually lies carefully fabricated by the merchants and misleading consumers.

"It's smiling happily"? No, it's trapped｜TuChong Creative

What is the truth behind the illusions and misleading information? How to expose the lies of merchants, how to persuade family and friends not to go to the aquarium with reason and evidence? How to understand whether the animals in the aquarium are living well? You can read this "Guide to the Truth about the Situation of Animals in the Aquarium".

No smile, no curiosity, no bow

In order to bring animals and humans closer together, businesses often interpret animals' expressions or behaviors according to human emotions. However, this wishful interpretation often conceals the real plight of captive animals.

Smiling whale

"Smiling Dolphin" is the most commonly used promotional term in oceanariums - not only dolphins, but also various cetaceans such as finless porpoises and white dolphins may be given the name of smiling.

This white dolphin looks like it is "smiling", but in fact its snout is injured. The so-called smile is just a visual effect caused by the bone structure｜23 China Whale Conservation Alliance

At present, the most captive species in domestic aquariums are bottlenose dolphins, beluga whales, East Asian finless porpoises, killer whales and Chinese white dolphins. The "smile" of these cetaceans is purely caused by their physiological structure . They just have an upward arc at the corners of their mouths, so they look like they are smiling from certain angles, which has nothing to do with emotions - even if they are sick or dead, these small cetaceans still look "smiling" .

What's more, in the small and barren captive environment, cetaceans are deprived and suppressed of their most basic physiological, psychological and behavioral needs, such as swimming in a straight line, sprinting at full speed, diving for prey, socializing freely, and exploring the environment. It is really difficult to force them to "smile happily".

Right whales always look like they are pouting in grievance, and this is also determined by their bones｜NOAA

Beluga whale interacting with children

The beluga whale opened its mouth to the children through the glass, which is also a favorite promotional image of the aquarium. Some businesses or marketing accounts interpreted this as "curious beluga whales interacting with humans", while others said it was "beluga whales like to scare children through the glass".

The children in the video are laughing happily, but they don’t know that the beluga whales they thought were interacting and playing with them may actually be saying “go away!”. The captive environment makes the beluga whales more susceptible to stress｜Youtube: @Michelle Cotton

In fact, this is a warning and attack from the beluga whale . When beluga whales and other captive cetaceans open their mouths and swim with tense muscles towards tourists, they are actually intimidating tourists, meaning "Don't come near, stay away from me."

In captivity, cetaceans open their mouths either to beg for food from trainers or to intimidate each other. If more than one beluga whale is kept in the same pool, they will open their mouths to intimidate each other when conflicts arise and they have nowhere to hide from each other, and the situation may even escalate into fighting. In addition, beluga whales in estrus will also open their mouths, and swim close to each other.

However, if the beluga whale opens its mouth towards humans and other creatures outside the glass and its body is tense, it is an aggressive behavior. Beluga whales in captivity cannot swim freely, cannot hunt and eat freely, cannot freely choose social partners, and the captive environment is monotonous, scarce and unchanging, which makes them suffer more pressure. When tourists approach the captive pool, if they use exaggerated body language and scream and slap the pool wall, it is easy to anger them.

The electric drill next door will annoy you, and the never-ending roar of the life-support system in the enclosure, the daily looping background music, the shouting of tourists and the slapping of acrylic, under these noises, it is easy to understand why cetaceans are irritated.｜23 China Whale Conservation Alliance

Polar bears that can bow, wave, and dance

Polar bears are also common animals in aquariums, but they often exhibit behaviors such as "waving" and "bowing", which are actually caused by feeding .

Polar bears bowing? No, this is the consequence of allowing tourists to feed them｜Ice City Xinzi

Most polar bear exhibition areas are designed with a pit and panoramic view, that is, the animals are placed in the center of the stage, and humans can observe the animals from all angles, even from a high position, but they have no shade. Some aquariums also invite tourists to buy food and feed them in the name of "behavioral display". The food falls from the sky, and the polar bears raise their heads and wave to grab the food . Seeing this, tourists may feed more food... Over time, this conditioned reflex of bowing is established, and it has also become a prize for aquariums to attract tourists.

In addition, polar bears are huge and require a vast habitat, making them one of the most difficult species to adapt to captivity . In addition to waving, many polar bears in oceanariums also have stereotyped behaviors, such as pacing or shaking their heads, or even slapping and biting fences and iron gates.

Polar bears in a "polar bear hotel" are watched year-round and have already shown obvious stereotyped behaviors. Screenshot from @China Whale Conservation Alliance

Animal performances are still not eliminated

In addition to forcibly interpreting animals' expressions and behaviors, some oceanariums still have animal performances.

The movements performed by animals are often not their natural behaviors ; in order to get the animals to perform, some venues will use starvation to "enhance the positive reinforcement effect of food" and other punishment methods such as whipping (again, call: reject animal performances!). Moreover, aquariums often package these performances with all kinds of completely unscientific interpretations .

Drooping dorsal fins are quite common in captive killer whales. This is the result of them being kept in shallow pools for a long time, spending a lot of time floating on the water begging for food and being bored, and the dorsal fin does not get enough buoyancy support from the seawater｜Milan Boers / flickr

Ocean "Canary" and Ocean "Little Musician"

This is the most common marketing tactic for beluga whales, and bottlenose dolphins and killer whales are occasionally dubbed "singers". During the performance, these animals will be invited to "present the most beautiful ocean sounds to everyone", and then the audience will hear a loud and sharp roar , especially in indoor performances, often many children will cover their ears because of the noise.

Beluga whales and bottlenose dolphins use nasal plugs to control the air in their air sacs to make sounds through their blowholes, similar to the principle of whistling. Cetaceans do not have vocal cords, but toothed whales use their larynx to make whistle-like sounds, and also use their air sacs and melanops to emit high-frequency signals required for echolocation. They can also make sounds by grinding their teeth and slapping the water with their flippers｜vetexotic.theclinics.com

In the wild, cetaceans also use their blowholes, larynx, air sacs and melanops to make sounds, and some also make sounds by grinding their teeth and slapping the water with their flippers. These sounds have practical uses , such as communication, finding food and detecting the environment through echolocation. But in the aquarium, they are required to make these screams, which, in addition to getting some frozen dead fish, is more likely to harm the hair cells of the audience and staff.

The white whales Amy and Navi in ​​the Beijing Oceanarium are often asked to "sing", and tourists can often hear their sharp calls in the aquarium. I wonder if they have established a connection of "screaming - getting food/someone to check on them", or if they use this to cope with the high-pressure environment. The white whale Amy recently died. Both of them had stereotyped behaviors such as hitting the pool wall and fence with their bodies, and Amy was particularly scarred. Rather than saying this is the "voice of the ocean", it is more like the desperate lament of captive cetaceans｜@China Whale Conservation Alliance

Competitive sea lions and clever walruses

There are two other pinnipeds that cannot escape the animal performances - sea lions and walruses. They usually appear one after the other and are used to warm up the audience before the whales and dolphins appear.

Sea lions often need to perform head-balls, ring-catching, howling, and use their pectoral fins to support their bodies on concrete floors , perform high-speed rotations, and "stand" and dance with their tail fins. These performances are not only unrelated to natural behavior, but also put tremendous pressure on the joints of animals . The body structure of marine animals, which evolved to live in the sea, cannot withstand these high-intensity land performances arranged by humans. If you look closely at their flippers and flipper joints, you can easily see wear and redness.

The body structure evolved for marine life is not suitable for land support｜@China Whale Conservation Alliance

Similarly, in performances, whales and dolphins are sometimes required to use their pectoral fins to prop themselves up and spin at high speeds on their bellies, which can also damage their joints.

Walruses are often portrayed as clowns by oceanariums - lazy, gluttonous, cunning, and covered in fat. However, for walruses living in the high-latitude waters of the northern hemisphere, subcutaneous fat is the guarantee of survival .

Moreover, many walruses in the aquarium have had their tusks cut off , and some have even been covered with metal skins. In the wild, walruses use their tusks to climb onto the ice or to dig holes in the frozen sea surface to breathe; male walruses also use their tusks as weapons to fight for territory and mates during the mating season. However, in captivity, tusks are useless and can easily break on concrete floors, causing secondary infections. In order to reduce management troubles, some venues simply "prepare for a rainy day" by cutting off the tusks.

Walruses are often asked to perform animal shows | TuChong Creative

Some venues package these performances as "natural behavior displays," but there are usually only a few "natural behaviors" on display ; moreover, the so-called swimming and sprinting are often limited by the length of the enclosure pool, and eating is only a process of "getting food and swallowing it." These behaviors are much more stereotyped and boring than those captured in documentaries.

Is the aquarium suitable for them to live in?

Even without animal shows and misleading publicity, some animals are not suitable for living in a small environment . If you go to an aquarium, you might as well observe whether there are these animals in the aquarium and whether they are living well.

Large migratory cartilaginous fish

As mentioned earlier, marine mammals such as cetaceans are trapped in small captive environments, and their physiological and psychological needs are restricted. In fact, not only marine mammals, but also large migratory cartilaginous fish represented by whale sharks have suffered from wild capture and captivity .

Swimming in confined captivity for long periods of time wears out their pectoral and caudal fins, and every whale shark that ends up in an aquarium is one that is lost to the wild, along with potential offspring.

Even though some whale sharks’ fish tanks may seem large, they are still far from their range in the wild｜@China Whale Conservation Alliance

Polar animals living in the tropics

Arctic wolves and foxes are often seen in so-called "polar oceanariums." Although they may come from breeding farms, this does not erase their attributes as wild animals that have evolved over millions of years.

In the wild, an Arctic wolf can travel up to 50 kilometers a day, and a family of Arctic foxes may have a territory of more than 30 square kilometers. Their body structures and eating habits have evolved to survive in the extreme cold of the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

The territory they need is far from what a small glass cubicle can provide｜@China Whale Conservation Alliance

But in the aquarium, most Arctic wolves and foxes can only be kept in cubicles of dozens of square meters. In spring, summer and autumn, in the aquarium in the south, it is easy to see them lying on the concrete floor with their mouths open, panting , and looking at the tourists in short sleeves with despair. They also almost all have stereotyped behaviors such as pacing and excessive biting of limbs. Arctic foxes often have claws that are too long and deformed due to lack of exercise and environmental discomfort.

Previously, in a certain aquarium, the nails of an Arctic fox grew to a deformed shape, and the soles of its feet also became strange because of the long nails｜Elang the Winged Wolf

Seals and turtles

There are two more animals that I want to mention separately - seals and turtles. Since February last year, the harbor seal and green turtle, loggerhead turtle, hawksbill turtle, Pacific ridley turtle, and leatherback turtle have all been promoted to the first-class protected wild animals in China .

But in the aquarium, they may be fed, touched closely, and even become the object of tourists throwing coins for blessings. Poor water quality and food can also cause seals to suffer from skin diseases and cataracts, and cause problems with the carapace, flippers and eyes of turtles.

Seals with skin diseases and cataracts appeared in the aquarium. According to regulations, the capture, artificial breeding, exhibition, and performance of first-class protected animals must be approved by the Ministry of Agriculture. We hope that the venue can stop tourists from feeding and close contact with seals, improve the quality of bait and captive welfare; arrange wild training if conditions permit, and try to send them to the Dalian Spotted Seal Reserve in Liaodong Bay｜23 China Whale Conservation Alliance

How to judge whether an oceanarium is "good" or not? Here are 5 criteria for your reference:

1. Whether it is involved in the capture, captivity, breeding, performance and trafficking of animals for profit ;

2. Whether it houses animals with complex physiological, psychological and behavioral needs and large range of activities;

3. Is it committed to habitat protection and rescue for the purpose of rewilding ?

4. Whether its breeding of animals is oriented towards reintroduction into the wild ;

5. Is it keeping up with the times, providing the public with scientific education about species and their wild habitats, and is it engaging in real scientific research and policy advocacy ?

However, no aquarium can compare to a good natural habitat, especially for cetaceans and other marine mammals. If you want to understand such mysterious marine creatures, it is better to learn and understand them through books, documentaries and responsible field observations , and learn about their habitats; if conditions permit, you can also support in situ protection and other conservation activities such as reintroduction and replenishment of wild populations, which is the real protection for them.

Author: 23 CCA

Editor: Mai Mai

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

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