Co-designing enrichment toys with Bottlenose dolphins : playfulness as a corrective to anthropocentrism

Abstract

This article discusses the process of co-designing enrichment toys for non-human animals under human care, offering a reflective account of this process, as it was carried out in direct and playful collaboration with a group of bottlenose dolphins at Mediterraneo Marine Park, which is located in Malta. It tells the story of an attempt to produce an active and fair context for multispecies negotiation. Leveraging thoughts and observations that emerged in moments of interspecies friction, we propose a way to critically reframe our biases and our relationships with non-human animals under human care. The paper presents the act of designing in terms of its possibility to go beyond being a passive reaction to a problem to become a conscious and deliberate process that addresses sociocultural issues, particularly those concerning power imbalances and unfair representations. In the case presented here, a goal beyond the immediate enrichment of the lives of bottlenose dolphins in human care was the reshaping of the social practices and power relationships that determine those existences.