ArticleRoyal Society open science2021
Evidence that bottlenose dolphins can communicate with vocal signals to solve a cooperative task.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- Identification and classification of repeated whistle types from free-ranging rough-toothed dolphins (Steno bredanensis).Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Assessing the Role of Vocal Plasticity in Sociospatial Coordination.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- The influence of dolphin group coordination on cooperative foraging with humans.Current zoology · 2025Article
- Evolutionary Trajectories of Consciousness: From Biological Foundations to Technological Horizons.Brain sciences · 2025Review
- Vocalization behaviors in captive bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and rough-toothed dolphins (Steno bredanensis).PloS one · 2025Article
- Smiling underwater: Exploring playful signals and rapid mimicry in bottlenose dolphins.iScience · 2024Article
- Calling to the collective: contact calling rates within groups of disc-winged bats do not vary by kinship or association.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- In pop pursuit: social bond strength predicts vocal synchrony during cooperative mate guarding in bottlenose dolphins.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- BASSA: New software tool reveals hidden details in visualisation of low-frequency animal sounds.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Minding the Minds: A Primer on Cognitive Challenge for Marine Mammals in Human Care.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Review
- Article
- "The song remains the same": not really! Vocal flexibility in the song of the indris.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Whistle repertoire and structure reflect ecotype distinction of pantropical spotted dolphins in the Eastern Tropical Pacific.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Bottlenose dolphins are sensitive to human attentional features, including eye functionality.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Cooperation increases bottlenose dolphins' (Tursiops truncatus) social affiliation.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Dogs take into account the actions of a human partner in a cooperative task.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Multimodal imitative learning and synchrony in cetaceans: A model for speech and singing evolution.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Review
- Optionality in animal communication: a novel framework for examining the evolution of arbitrariness.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2022Article
- Vocal signals facilitate cooperative hunting in wild chimpanzees.Science advances · 2022Article
- Cetacean Acoustic Welfare in Wild and Managed-Care Settings: Gaps and Opportunities.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
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.
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