One of the current goals of Conservation Biology is the education of human society so that people establish relationships with nature depending on... » More

One of the current goals of Conservation Biology is the education of human society so that people establish relationships with nature depending on their culture. In this paper we began to explore the knowledge about cetaceans that Spanish urban society has. To do this, 411 people of different sex, ages, professions, educational levels and cities in Spain, were surveyed considering basic characteristics of cetaceans like "being a mammal" or "breathing through lungs". Our results show that 98%, 97% and 90% (respectively) of respondents consider dolphins, whales and porpoises to be mammals. Those who disagreed considered dolphins and whales to be fish, but differed between fish and invertebrates in the case of porpoises. Only 82% of respondents knew that a dolphin breathes through lungs and 56% of respondents believed that the Orca (Orcinus orca) does not belong to the same group as dolphins but classify it as a whale or fish. Comparing the knowledge level with the individual parameters quantified, we found that the knowledge is greater in people who live in coastal provinces (r=0.10 p=0.04) or those who have a higher academic level (r=0.19 p<0.01) or belong to the field of Biology, Veterinary or Marine Science (r=0.33 p<0.01).

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