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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: 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.