Giving a dolphin a hand

Dolphins are sexually  active animals and male dolphins such as bottle nose dolphins living in the wild are known to masturbate regularly to climax. One reason  might be to flush out sperm that has lost its motility. Same holds for bottle nose dolphins held in captivity which often have  limited  space or partners to play or copulate with. In some cases dolphin trainers help dolphins  to ejaculate, to  collect sperm for artificial insemination. Dolphins have already learned to turn on their back and  let the trainer do the 'hand job'.  It’s not necessarily something to get upset about or to think that these animals are maltreated

But  the public often reacts shocked when they read or see in the media that  a human person was involved in helping the animal to lose  it sperm. Like in a Dutch newspaper today. And then easily  associate it  with  ‘animal sex’, a perverted form of human/animal  interactions that can be found on Internet.

Animal  liberators are always on the front row in their  protests. Some of it is justified, and its true that some dolphinaria do not have sufficient space to hold marine mammals as dolphins or Orcas. The other side of the coin  is that many of them would not survive when set back in the ocean again.