Dear All,

We are pleased to share our new publication in Royal Society Open Science titled Evidence that bottlenose dolphins can communicate with vocal signals to solve a cooperative task by Stephanie L. King, Emily Guarino, Katy Donegan, Christina McMullen and Kelly Jaakkola.

Abstract: Cooperation experiments have long been used to explore the cognition underlying animals' coordination towards a shared goal. While the ability to understand the need for a partner in a cooperative task has been demonstrated in a number of species, there has been far less focus on cooperation experiments that address the role of communication. In humans, cooperative efforts can be enhanced by physical synchrony, and coordination problems can be solved using spoken language. Indeed, human children adapt to complex coordination problems by communicating with vocal signals. Here, we investigate whether bottlenose dolphins can use vocal signals to coordinate their behaviour in a cooperative button-pressing task. The two dolphin dyads used in this study were significantly more likely to cooperate successfully when they used whistles prior to pressing their buttons, with whistling leading to shorter button press intervals and more successful trials. Whistle timing was important as the dolphins were significantly more likely to succeed if they pushed their buttons together after the last whistle, rather than pushing independently of whistle production. Bottlenose dolphins are well known for cooperating extensively in the wild, and while it remains to be seen how wild dolphins use communication to coordinate cooperation, our results reveal that at least some dolphins are capable of using vocal signals to facilitate the successful execution of coordinated, cooperative actions.

The paper is OA and can be found here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.202073

All the best,

Stephanie and co-authors

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Dr Stephanie L. King

Senior Lecturer

School of Biological Sciences

Life Sciences Building | 24 Tyndall Avenue

University of Bristol | Bristol BS8 1TQ | U.K.

+44 (0) 117 39 41191

Twitter: @_StephanieLKing

website: www.cetaceancommcog.com

website: www.sharkbaydolphins.org

I am a friend of the BAME and LGBQT communities because I believe in equality for everyone