After studying dolphins in Shark Bay for 40 years, what more could we possibly learn? Our claim is that The Dolphin Intelligence in the Wild Project will bring together our incredible team of top scientists, the new technology that is revolutionizing every area of our research, and the most amazing population of dolphins in the world to bring about the greatest advance in history of our understanding of dolphin social intelligence and culture in the wild! That is a big claim but now we have ‘proof of concept’ of what we can do with the new technology. The top scientific journal Nature Communications published a ‘proof of concept’ paper, showing that the sky is the limit for our research! Using a hydrophone array, underwater playbacks and a drone, we showed that dolphins have, like humans, a social concept of ‘team membership’. We could not have done this study 10 years ago! Watch the incredible video and read the report in Science that describes our study as ‘ground breaking’ and ‘the missing link’ in understanding dolphin cooperation!
We have also used the new technology to show that males value their second-order allies as ‘team members’, even those they don’t seem to like very much (they don’t spend much time together) because they exchange whistles with them more than they do with closely bonded males. They are more often next to and can pet with their good friends in the groups, but whistle exchanges allow them to maintain bonds with other males in their alliance! Who else uses vocalizations in lieu of close proximity? Humans!
We can only accomplish our goal to learn all we can about the incredible Shark Bay dolphins with your help! Please donate now to The Dolphin Alliance Project!
