Dolphin behavior towards adults and children during dolphinswimm antalya

We observed three groups of people Dolphin swim Antalya: adults, children under 12 years old, and children with mental and physical disabilities (also under 12 years old). Children with disabilities are referred to as patients. These patients had various mental and physical disabilities, such as spasticity, panic syndrome, epilepsy, ADHD, Louis-Bar syndrome, and self-diagnosis. There were no special requirements necessary to participate in this therapy, except that patients had to have head control.

Materials and procedure The group was monitored with two Sony cameras (CCD-107P), equipped with polarized lenses, with a resolution of 752 X 582 pixels. A wide-angle lens camera captured the entire pool area and was mounted above and to the side of the pool. The second camera recorded only a very busy area. This area was used to identify dolphins. Two VCRs (GV 690 S HiFi) was used to record the video transmissions synchronized by the fast time code on the tapes. This arrangement allowed the focal animal sampling technique (Martin and Bateson 1986) to be used for each dolphin simultaneously. Therefore, we were able to analyze data from all five dolphins and all swimmers at the same time.

In recent years, dolphin swim has become very popular and a growing number of facilities around the world offer dolphin therapy programs. Unlike other animal-assisted therapy programs, dolphins are not pets;

 Dolphin swim Antalya has been used for nearly 20 years to help people with terminal illnesses and people with mental and physical disabilities. In contrast to our knowledge of swimming programs and swimming with healthy humans (Frohoff and Packard 1993; Samuels and Spradlin, 1995; Kyngdon, Minot, and Stafford 2003), there are virtually no publications on the behavior of dolphins in swimming programs with adults. and kids. mentally and physically disabled

 Swimming with dolphins led to an improvement in the social situation of families with children with disabilities. In fact, Webb and Drummond (2001) found that people's anxiety levels decreased significantly after swimming with dolphins.

One reason for the popularity of dolphin-assisted therapy could be that humans have a very emotional bond with these animals. However, we do not believe that this is a sufficient explanation, because a high percentage of patients are very young or, for example, autistic, and it is very unlikely that these patients developed this emotional bond before therapy. Furthermore, we observed that many patients hesitated to interact with dolphins in the first sessions because they were afraid of these huge unknown animals. However, it is the emotional attachment of humans that is responsible for the great media interest that this type of therapy generates. If there is indeed any difference between the effectiveness of dolphin-assisted therapy and other assisted animal therapies, it may be due to factors such as the thrill of being in the water or all the extra attention that participants in dolphin-assisted therapy receive.

 After identifying an individual in the highly frequented area, a special mouse-based computer program on the video screen (covering the entire group) was used to identify the position of dolphins and humans in overtime. To do so, the analog video stream was digitized and presented on a computer screen. Each individual was manually followed by the experimenter with the computer cursor pointing at either the human head or the dolphin melon, and the cursor position was recorded once every second. Furthermore, it was possible to add notes about each individual (dolphin or human) at any particular time, describing, for example, the depth of the dive or the color of the swimming team. Unfortunately, it was not possible to map the cursor position directly in the video view. All photo and video sources have perspective distortion, depending on the angle of the camera. This distortion must be taken into account in all cases to calculate the exact positions.