Dolphins are known to be among the most intelligent animals on our planet (3). With this intelligence, they have found many practical and unique ways to thrive within their environment. Naturally, these mammals live within pods of mothers and their calves ranging from five to twenty-five individuals (1). These pods grow and hunt while learning from each other as a community thriving off of teamwork and culture. Among these pods, there is also the capability of finding even bigger groups called superpods that can have up to one thousand individuals (1). With their natural intelligence and social nature, these cetaceans have found effective ways to capture their prey, even showing the use of tools in their various methods.
One of the nifty ways dolphins learn to capture their prey is through a method called “shelling.” While pursuing their game, dolphins trick the prey into seeking refuge by hiding in large uninhabited snail shells. Then the dolphin will bring the shell to the water’s surface by balancing its nose or rostrum in the shell’s opening. The dolphins then shake the shell, depositing the water until the prey practically falls into the dolphin’s mouth (2). While Sonja Wild and her partners chose to study this behavior and method of foraging in their experiment, these dolphins have learned many other ways to capture their prey. But what is just as important to think about is how this method came about within this species.
It has been generally understood that within these pods, the calves take after their mothers performing techniques of foraging and other behaviors which were passed on to the calves. This is what is called vertical social transmission, which we see on a daily basis in our lives and our environment. But, In a report released by Science Direct, they say how their research shows evidence of learning that is not through this mother-to-calf relationship but through a more social aspect within pods and superpods. This discovery connects this cetacean species with the great ape species in the element of learning cultural behaviors (2).
The experiment obtained their findings using network-based diffusion analysis (2). Similar to a pedigree chart, this statistical tool shows relationships between individuals within a population and between populations. In this particular experiment, researchers used a multi-network-based diffusion analysis to collect all information considering social learning, the environment, and genetics (2). While not excluding the vertical social transmission of this behavior, the results of this experiment yielded evidence that this behavior of shelling was learned within generations, describing the rapid rate of development of the behavior.
- Bottlenose dolphin pod [Internet]. Smithsonian Ocean. 2018 [cited 2022Oct13]. Available from: https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/marine-mammals/bottlenose-dolphin-pod#:~:text=Bottlenose%20dolphins%20(Tursiops%20truncatus)%20are,males)%20of%201%2C000%20or%20more.
- Wild S, Hoppitt WJE, Allen SJ, Krützen M. Integrating genetic, environmental, and social networks to reveal transmission pathways of a dolphin foraging innovation [Internet]. Current Biology. Cell Press; 2020 [cited 2022Oct13]. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982220307569
- Adlam C. Dolphin ” noahsnotes [Internet]. NoahsNotes. 2020 [cited 2022Oct13]. Available from: http://noahsnotes.org/wildlife/june-2020-animal-feature-dolphin/
