It’s even worse for the dolphins…

Dolphins can catch diseases from humans too – especially infections of the windpipe. And that's made worse because the stress of keeping these highly intelligent animals in captivity comprises their immune system. According to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, captive dolphins must be continually treated with antibiotics. “Without them, they would live no longer than a few days, succumbing to infections and malignant parasites as stress ravages their natural immunity.”

But I’ve left the worst till the last. While dolphins are bred in captivity in the United States, in some other countries that practise Dolphin Assisted Therapy dolphins are captured from the wild.

Lori Marino describes a typical ‘dolphin drive’, where hundreds of dolphins are killed or die of heart attacks as just a few of the youngest animals are selected for marine parks around the world – “from water that’s red with dolphin blood”. She adds: “if people knew how these animals were captured, I don’t think they would want to swim them or participate in DAT.”

For more information

Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society report (pdf)
http://www.wdcs.org/submissions_bin/datreport.pdf

Research Autism report
http://www.researchautism.net/interventionitem.ikml?print&ra=64&infolevel=4