The Dubai Autism Centre has joined forces with Palm Atlantis to incorporate dolphin therapy into their course of interaction and communication therapies. This is in addition to the professional services and programmes DAC offers to children with autism - none of which to date has involved dolphins.

Sarah Al Marzooqi from DAC stated that the new programme is supervised by a team of occupational and movement therapists, psychologists and special educators. She also highlighted how important support from its partners and community were and thanked the Atlantis Palm for hosting and sponsoring this dolphin therapy programme.

Apart from the moral issue of using captive animals in this way, there are also very good arguments against the effectiveness of DAT.

click here to read more about DAT including an excellent paper by Lori Marino and Scott O Lilienfeld