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Bottlenose dolphins have been observed chattering while cooperating to solve a tricky puzzle – a feat that suggests they have a type of vocalisation dedicated to cooperating on problem solving.
Holli Eskelinen of Dolphins Plus research institute in Florida and her colleagues at the University of Southern Mississippi presented a group of six captive dolphins with a locked canister filled with food. The canister could only be opened by simultaneously pulling on a rope at either end.
The team conducted 24 canister trials, during which all six dolphins were present. Only two of the dolphins ever managed to crack the puzzle and get to the food.
The successful pair was prolific, though: in 20 of the trials, the same two adult males worked together to open the food canister in a matter of 30 seconds. In the other four trials, one of the dolphins managed to solve the problem on its own, but this was much trickier and took longer to execute.
But the real surprise came from recordings of the vocalisations the dolphins made during the experiment. The team found that when the dolphins worked together to open the canister, they made more vocalisations than they did while opening the canister on their own or when there was either no canister present or no interaction with the canister in the pool.
Hmm. Now all we need are studies that prove mice chittering decodes to discussing the meaning of 42.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2016, @04:12PM
... that it contradicts an earlier result that proved that even given the simplest of puzzles that required communication and cooperation couldn't be solved by dolphins. There was one where the food would only be given to dolphins in a timely fashion if one communicated to another which of two buttons should be pressed - the "leader"'s food button was illuminated, and he too only got food in a timely fashion if the other cooperated. All that is required to solve that puzzle is one single bit of information - left or right. (And before you say "but the whole puzzle needs to be explained!", they were permitted to learn the same-button protocol by being in full sight of each other for weeks before a screen was introduced between them, so they both knew how it worked.)
Having said that, interpreting the result as "one third of dolphins only able to pass information to one fifth of other dolphins", the new result looks pretty weak. That, and it doesn't seem to be a problem that requires communication - it's just learnt behaviour. Two dolphins desperate to tug on any free rope presented to them will crack this puzzle and get rewarded for their eagerness every time, without a single bit of information passing between them. Put a partition between them, so that one of them doesn't know when the other gets given access to the rope, and I might believe they've got to the level of understanding "walkies!", which doesn't exactly require much intelligence in an animal.
I'm not saying they're not smart, I'm just saying that this really doesn't sound like the experiment that demonstrates it. From the summary at least.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday May 03 2016, @04:24PM
Maybe the problem was not cooperation, but the screen; possibly they didn't understand that it was still essentially the same situation despite the screen. After all, there are usually no screens in the open sea.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2016, @08:55PM
I don't remember the details, it could be that the screen was slowly introduced, obscuring more and more of what was going on on the other side as the experiment progressed.
Open sea had nothing to do with either experiment.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday May 04 2016, @03:12AM
Open sea is the natural habitat of dolphins, and in particular the environment in which the dolphin brain evolved.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2016, @05:47PM
>... that it contradicts an earlier result that proved ...
Link or it didn't happen.
Hearsay in these matters is most often distorted out of any semblance of reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2016, @08:21PM
That only proves that dolphins are bad with buttons - especially those on a screen. Which explains why you never see dolphins using a mouse or Windows 8.