Dolphins' Willingness to Participate () in Positive Reinforcement Training as a Potential Welfare Indicator, Where Predicts Early Changes in Health Status.

Welfare science has built its foundations on veterinary medicine and thus measures of health. Since bottlenose dolphins () tend to mask symptoms of poor health, management in captivity would benefit from advanced understanding on the links between health and behavioural parameters, and few studies exist on the topic. In this study, four representative behavioural and health measures were chosen: health status (as qualified by veterinarians), percentage of daily food eaten, occurrences of new rake marks (proxy measure of social activity), and willingness to participate () in Positive Reinforcement Training sessions as qualitatively measured by their caretakers.