Research on the welfare of captive odontocetes has increased in recent years, but has been mostly focused on bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). Few studies investigated potential welfare indicators using quantitative data linked to a range of conditions or stimuli that are thought to impact the animals’ emotional state. Since odontocetes are social animals that engage in various social interactions, these interactions might inform us on their welfare state. We investigated pectoral contact laterality and the effect of the context on several social behaviors in three groups of captive odontocetes (Yangtze finless porpoises, YFPs: Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis; East-Asian finless porpoises, EAFPs: N. a. sunameri, and bottlenose dolphins, BDs). Animals exhibited patterns depending on the time of the day for most of the social behaviors we analyzed; social separation was associated with lower rates of social behaviors for the two analyzed groups (YFPs and BDs), the accessibility to several pools was associated with higher rates of social behaviors for BDs. The effect of enrichment, disturbances and public presence was less clear and strongly depended on the group, the type of enrichment and disturbance. Our results confirm that captive odontocetes’ social behaviors are influenced by the context, and that, depending on the group, some of them, such as pectoral contacts, other body contacts, agonistic interactions or social play exhibit consistent patterns across contexts. Monitoring these behaviors might be useful to adapt the captive management to each species and group. The different responses among the three studied groups confirm that species and groups react differently to a stimulus and therefore, management decisions should be species/group specific. We recommend that more studies should be conducted to validate our findings in other groups of odontocetes under human care.

中文翻译：

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俘虏牙本质中的身体接触和社会互动受环境影响：福利评估的意义。

近年来，对圈养o齿动物福利的研究有所增加，但主要集中在宽吻海豚（Tursiops truncatus）上。很少有研究使用与一系列条件或刺激相关的定量数据研究潜在的福利指标，这些条件或刺激被认为会影响动物的情绪状态。由于齿齿动物是参与各种社交互动的社交动物，因此这些互动可能会告诉我们有关其福利状态的信息。我们调查了三组圈养的齿形齿科（Yangsze finless porpoises，YFPs：Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis ; East-Asian finless porpoises，EAFPs：N.a.以及宽吻海豚（BDs）。在我们分析的大多数社会行为中，动物表现出的模式取决于一天中的时间。两个被分析群体（YFP和BD）的社会隔离与较低的社会行为发生率相关，BD的较高的社交行为发生率与两个群体的可及性相关。浓缩，干扰和公众参与的影响尚不清楚，并且强烈取决于浓缩，干扰和干扰的类型。我们的研究结果证实，圈养的don牙鼠的社交行为会受到环境的影响，并且根据群体的不同，其中的某些因素（如胸膜接触，其他身体接触，激动性互动或社交活动）在整个环境中表现出一致的模式。监视这些行为对于使圈养管理适应每个物种和种群可能很有用。三个研究组之间的不同反应证实了物种和组对刺激的反应不同，因此，管理决策应针对物种/组。我们建议应该进行更多的研究，以验证我们在其他受到人类照料的牙形突动物组中的发现。