India Outlaws Captive Dolphin Shows and Importing Them For Entertainment

India is the world's fourth nation that banned catching and importing cetaceans for commercial entertainment. Other countries are Costa Rica, Hungary and Chile. India Government has been influenced by the outcome of the research on dolphins that established that these creature are highly intelligent and very sensitive. The government has taken a decision to close all dolphin parks in India.

Puja Mitra from the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations (FIAPO) in this context said, "the scientific evidence we provided during the campaign talked about cetacean intelligence and introduced the concept of non-human persons," she added, "the majority of dolphins and whales in captivity have been sourced through wild captures in Japan, in Taiji, in the Caribbean, in the Solomon Islands and parts of Russia. These captures are very violent"

It is really a great news that India's Government has given dolphins a status of “non-human personhood”, making the country unique in the way the people there thinks about the endangered species like dolphins. The decision of granting dolphins the status of “non-human personhood” was officially announced by India’s Minister of the Environment and Forests. The government outlawed captive dolphin shows and the ministry said that dolphins “should have their own specific rights.”