Records of Postmortem Attentive Behavior on an Irrawaddy Dolphin (Orcaella brevirostris) Calf and Implications for Conservation in Kuching Bay, Sarawak, East Malaysia

Cindy, Peter and Gianna, Minton and Anna Norliza, Zulkifli Poh and Goh, Ann Jie and Andrew Alek, Tuen and Samuel, Kiyui. and Marie-Françoise, Van Bressem and Oswald Braken, Tisen (2023) Records of Postmortem Attentive Behavior on an Irrawaddy Dolphin (Orcaella brevirostris) Calf and Implications for Conservation in Kuching Bay, Sarawak, East Malaysia. Aquatic Mammals, 49 (1). ISSN 1996-7292

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Abstract

Postmortem Attentive Behaviors (PABs), also known as epimeletic behaviors, have been observed in terrestrial mammalian species, such as primates, giraffes, and elephants (Nakamichi etal., 1996; Douglas-Hamilton etal., 2006; Li etal., 2012; Strauss & Muller, 2013), as well as in aquatic mammals (Reggente etal., 2016; Bearzi & Reggente, 2017; Bearzi etal., 2017). In cetaceans, epimeletic behavior is described as one or more adults attending to an injured, distressed, dying, or deceased animal by keeping it afloat if sinking, pushing it down if buoyant, performing “resuscitation” attempts, and/or carrying it on the dorsum, head, rostrum, or in the mouth (Reggente etal., 2016; Bearzi & Reggente, 2017). Most records of cetacean PAB involved Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis), common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), and Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) (e.g., Porter, 2002; Kuczaj etal., 2015; Bearzi etal., 2017, 2018; Cheng etal., 2018; Reggente etal., 2018; Pedrazzi etal., 2022). Until now, only one case of this behavior has been documented in Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris) from Balikpapan Bay, Indonesia (Kreb etal., 2020). Herein, we describe a rare event of PAB towards an Irrawaddy dolphin calf in Kuching Bay, Sarawak, East Malaysia, and its implications for conservation.

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