Evidence that bottlenose dolphins can communicate with vocal signals to solve a cooperative task.

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 cooperat

SUBMITTER: King SL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8074934 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature