title: Can dolphins heal by ultrasound?
abstract: In recent years, dolphin-assisted therapy has become very popular and an increasing number of facilities offer therapy programs with dolphins worldwide. To this date, there are no studies concerning the behavior of dolphins during these therapies. As a result of speculations that the echolocation of dolphins may play an important role for the success of the therapy and the high publicity of this in the media, people pay much more for dolphin-assisted than for other animal-assisted therapy programs. Based on publications in medicine, we will show that ultrasound emitted by dolphins could have an effect on biological tissue under some circumstances; such as sufficient intensity, repeated application over several days or weeks and a certain application duration per session. We recorded 83 sessions at the "Dolphins Plus", a fenced area with ocean water in the Florida Keys. Our observations demonstrate that only one out of five observed dolphins behave significantly differently towards patients compared to other humans and that the duration of the observed close contacts did not meet the requirements for common ultrasound therapies.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Behavioral Research, Free University of Berlin, Verhaltensbiologie Haderslebener Strasse 9, D-12163 Berlin, Germany. kb@breli.de
authors.forename: Karsten
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Brensing
authors.forename: Katrin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Linke
authors.forename: Dietmar
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Todt
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D000529:Complementary Therapies; D004289:Dolphins / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D014464:Ultrasonic Therapy