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News Archives
May, 2003
Gambling with their lives: Dolphins held captive in the desert
Set among Las Vegas's glittering neon skyline is the Mirage Hotel and Gambling Casino, a luxurious entertainment facility built over a decade ago and owned by the MGM Corporation. The Mirage is home to the world's most well-known team of illusionists, Siegfried and Roy, and their collection of rare white tigers, an elephant and ten dolphins. The Mirage calls the housing facilities for these animals "the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat", making it sound magical, exotic and natural. In fact, this Secret Garden is the hotel's greatest illusion, masking what in reality is nothing more than a small zoo.
There are ten dolphins currently living in the Mirage's Dolphin Habitat, seven of which were born at the facility. The hotel uses the dolphins as an exotic display to lure visitors to their resort and casino. Billed as a "research and educational" facility, the dolphin trainers and staff go out of their way to stress that they do not use the dolphins in traditional dolphin shows or performances. However, these dolphins are made to interact with the trainers for public display and they are trained to perform such tricks as tail walking, vocalizing, ball playing, flipper waving and towing their trainers around on their dorsal fins, just like dolphins at traditional captive dolphin facilities are trained to do.
The Mirage also promotes its dolphin program as a leader in the captive breeding of dolphins. According to a sign posted beside the "dolphin lagoon", "All the Mirage dolphins are…relocated here through other marine facilities. None were captured from the wild." This statement contradicts federal Marine Mammal Inventory Report (MMIR) records released in 2003, which state that at least three of the dolphins kept at the Mirage were captured from the wild, two of which are now dead.
The dolphins are housed in three separate tanks according to their breeding status and how well they get along with each other. A brochure distributed by the Mirage states that the dolphins' "habitat" has been made in such a way that it replicates the dolphins' natural environment and provides a healthy and nurturing environment for the dolphins. Again, this is another attempt by the Mirage to mislead the public into accepting the captivity of dolphins. The so-called "natural environment" is in fact a coral reef made from acrylic and plastic with painted on sand to give the illusion of a sandy ocean bottom.
According to the MMIR, five dolphins died at the Mirage between 1990 and 1994. The Mirage continues to breed dolphins using artificial insemination, thus adding to the numbers of captive animals who will never live as true dolphins.
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