16.03.2021 Stephanie L King

Almost four decades of research on Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia, has revealed a complex structure of nested alliance formation among unrelated males, as well as both vertically and horizontally transmitted tool use, providing striking parallels in social complexity and behavioural richness to some human societies. The nested alliance levels mean that dolphins need to keep track of many different relationships, both at the individual and alliance level, which may pose significant cognitive challenges. I will cover some of the key research on bottlenose dolphin communication, discussing the mounting evidence that dolphins exhibit many of the cognitive skills humans possess to facilitate the monitoring of individual behaviour, including individual vocal labels similar to human names, and long-term social memory. I will use long-term field data to show that acoustic and behavioural coordination are key components of dolphin alliance behaviour, and playback experiments to illustrate that allied male dolphins form social concepts that categorize conspecifics according to shared cooperative history. I propose that coordinated behaviour and cooperation-based concept formation evolved to promote social bonding and cooperation among allies in animal societies with extensive cooperation between non-kin.

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