What’s life like for a performing dolphin? Visitors to marine parks are often so mesmerized by the crystal blue water, pulsing music and enchanting dolphins that it’s easy to overlook whether or not the dolphins’ behavior is natural or even comfortable for them. Now you can gain some insight into what’s going on behind that dolphin smile. Here are a few common tricks and behaviors you’ll see and the reasons why the dolphins do what they do.

• He’s smiling. He must be happy! Dolphins appear to smile only because of the way their mouths are shaped; it is not a reflection of their emotional state. Whether free or captive, content or in pain, dolphins always appear to smile.

• Performing dolphins spend 80% of their time at the surface of the water seeking scraps of food and attention. In contrast, wild dolphins spend 80% of their time underwater playing, hunting and exploring.

• Captive dolphins seem eager to interact with visitors. They wave their pectoral fins, vocalize and offer handshakes. Dolphins are trained through operant conditioning, a type of reward and denial system based on food. . If they complete the desired trick, they receive a few bites of fish. If a performing dolphin is waving to you, it is because it wants food, plain and simple.

• Dolphins beach themselves on a platform or stage so that visitors can pet or kiss them. Captive dolphins beach themselves because they have been trained to ignore their natural instincts. In the wild, dolphins don't voluntarily beach themselves as it causes pain and eventually, death.

• Captive dolphins seem to bask in the sun and float lazily on the water’s surface. Or, they’re getting some exercise by doing laps around their pens. These are called “stereotypical” behaviors and mean that the animal is bored and psychologically distressed. Wild dolphins are rarely still, only lying motionless to recuperate after extended periods of hunting, feeding and traveling.

• Dolphins on either side of a gated pen splash and slap their tails. Look how happy they are to see each other! Far from an expression of playfulness or joy, these dolphins are agitated and stressed. They are trying to reach each other but are blocked by a wire fence.

• Some facilities claim that their dolphins are partially free – that they have unrestricted access to the open ocean and return of their own free will. Clever advertising? Yes. Freedom? No. Dolphins are only let out of their pens when they’re hungry, ensuring the trainer that the animals will stay in the area. Stripped of their ability to hunt on their own, the animals are compelled to return when the hunger overcomes them.