The Chase star Anne Hegerty has hit back after she was criticised for swimming with dolphins as part of travel show The Chasers Road Trip, in which she co-stars.
Fully titled The Chasers Road Trip: Trains, Brains and Automobiles, the show's trailer featured Hegerty - aka 'The Governess' - and her co-stars Mark Labbett and Shaun Wallace interacting with the marine life in Florida, where they were testing animals' intelligence as part of the first episode of the series.
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However, animal protection organisations including the RSPCA have condemned the footage, which saw Hegerty swimming in a pool with the captive dolphins, while Springwatch presenter Chris Packham has also weighed in.
"Keeping dolphins and whales captive deprives them of some of the most basic freedoms and causes them unacceptable levels of stress and suffering," the RSPCA wrote in a statement.
Packham, meanwhile, pointed blame at the producers of the show, telling The Mirror: "It's probably not at the forefront of their thinking that that sort of thing might be seen as unacceptable.
"So I suppose if there's any disappointment, it would come from the production companies because they should be on top of this and making sure that their presenters, their contributors are made aware of those issues, and then they've got a choice."
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However, it's clear that Hegerty was comfortable with the scene.
She hit back at detractors, telling The Sun: "I would rather not respond to it at all. I would just say this was a dolphin research centre, the dolphins had been rescued and rehabilitated, and what we saw were the dolphins that could not be released back into the wild."
The footage was also debated on social media, with one user tweeting: "These dolphins may look happy but they are suffering."
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Nevertheless, Hegerty remained defiant as she referenced people whose evidence is based on watching 2013 BAFTA-nominated SeaWorld documentary Blackfish as well as 2009 Japanese whale hunting documentary The Cove.
She added: "All these people saying 'watch Blackfish' and 'watch The Cove', I don't think they realise we're not talking about somewhere like SeaWorld.
"But that's all I'm going to say because we're basically not saying anything."
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Hegerty's defence of the new trailer comes off the back of her co-star Wallace's comments to The Sunday Express.
"I make no secret of the fact we should respect animals - we share our habitat with them," the 60-year-old said to the paper.
"I made that plain whenever I could. Animals should be able to live in their natural habitat instead of man tearing it down.
"I'm not a fan of keeping animals in cages for the sake of doing it. If it's done for scientific research, I can understand it."
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His comments were echoed by Labbett too, with 'The Beast' telling the Radio Times: "I'm not properly qualified to say [whether it was cruel or not] and the people we met all seemed to be very eminent in the fields of marine biology, and they seem to have a real passion for looking after their charges and certainly several dolphins there."
The show finishes tomorrow (Thursday 4 February) on ITV.
Featured Image Credit: ITVTopics: TV and Film, the chase, UK Entertainment