All photography provided by The Dolphin Alliance Project
Shark Bay is a marine biologist's paradise and the best place in the world to learn about dolphin intelligence in the wild. Boasting the largest seagrass beds in the world, Shark Bay hosts an enormous population of Indo-Pacific Bottlenose dolphins that live in a society whose complexity has astonished the scientists studying them since the 1980’s. Many animals form alliances or coalitions in competition for food or mates, but The Dolphin Alliance Project discovered that the Shark Bay dolphins form three levels of nested alliances. There is only one other species that does that: Homo sapiens. Just as humans cooperate with friends against foes, from villages to nation states, the dolphins negotiate a labyrinth of friends, rivals, rival friends and friendly rivals in a system so complex that the word "politics" must be invoked. It is no coincidence that humans and dolphins have the biggest brains in the world and the most complex societies.
Our Mission
The Dolphin Alliance Project is poised to take full advantage of this opportunity by utilizing the newest in technologies to discover the role that culture plays in male alliance behavior. During The Dolphin Alliance Culture Project, scientists will examine over a dozen alliances for evidence that differences in social behavior, feeding and communication are based on culture; or differences in learned behaviors. Drones will assist viewing social interactions allowing us to examine social interactions in more detail than was previously possible. We can determine which dolphin is ‘talking’ with an array of hydrophones on the boat. Remarkably, individual dolphins differ in what they eat and how they catch their prey. Sophisticated new sonars will allow us to map and observe the dolphins' habitat and fish prey to see how those factors impact their alliance behavior. The Dolphin Alliance Project’s simultaneous studies will enable a fully integrated understanding of the dolphins' complex alliances and social and cultural intelligence. Nothing like this has ever been attempted on any dolphin population!
“Dolphins entrance us. But, the real nature of these beguiling creatures has been largely hidden under the waves....”
What We've Achieved
Found that the Shark Bay dolphins don't just have alliances in their social network, they had 'alliances of alliances', a phenomenon that is a prominent feature of traditional and modern human societies. Dolphins do not live in 'pods' like killer whales as groups are constantly changing in size and membership during the day, just like us! The dolphin society in Shark Bay is the most complex non human society on the planet.
We used playback experiments of dolphin ‘signature whistles’ to demonstrate that dolphins perceive their allies as team members
Discovered an incredible third level of alliance formation.
How often individual males are observed consorting females varies within and between alliances.
Male dolphins in alliances move synchronously like marching human soldiers --and like no other animal that forms alliances.
Alliance members will come to the aid of allies in fights from long distances.
Dolphins use special techniques to catch fish, including using sponges as tools to find fish on the bottom, and tail-slaps to scare fish hiding in seagrass. Different dolphins use different fishing techniques!
We have recently discovered that alliance behavior varies systematically along the length of the peninsula. Males in the north form trios nearly exclusively, while males in the south form pairs more often and the largest groups are in the north. Further, males in the south consort females less often than males in the north. These discoveries have no precedent in other populations and offers a chance to examine ecological influences on alliance formation.
Dolphins have 'names' in the form of individual whistles, and can imitate each others' names. The can also respond with their name when they hear it.
When you take body size into account, dolphins have the largest brains after humans...We have always known the Dolphins have the second largest brain after humans when you take body size into account. But the organization of the brain is very different. The question then becomes, does dolphin behavior in the wild match what we would expect from such a large brain? In Shark Bay we are finding out that the answer is YES!
Watch this early 2020 lecture by Dr. Richard Connor on the fantastic dolphin discoveries have made in Shark Bay and the incredible potential of The Dolphin ALLIANCE CULTURE Project. Please note that if you click the link in the video for the Dolphin Decade, you will be redirected here, as exciting new developments have led us to focus on Alliance Culture!