Healing dolphins? Cognitive and perceptual criticisms in Dolphin-Assisted Therapy

The rate of Dolphin-Assisted Therapies and Activities has significantly increased over the last three decades, involving these marine mammals in disturbing open sea interactions or in unhealthy and stressful conditions, due to their confinement, training and participation to ineffective or exploitative practices. The perceptual and cognitive misinterpretations in the human-animal interaction play a dramatic role in this field, exposing non-human species, here represented by vulnerable dolphins, to activities that highly impact on animal welfare [4, 9]. Therefore it seems necessary not only to apply for more suitable treatments (replacement) and for compliance to regulations by DAA operators (refinement), but also to further in dolphin ethological observations and cognitive-behavioural research. A related thorough popularization of the scientific outcomes / a dissemination of the results obtained with scientific scrutiny appears of primary importance, in order to avoid these type of perceptual and cognitive misinterpretations and to promote more respectful attitudes towards non-human species.