School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, USA.
Evol Anthropol. 2011 May-Jun;20(3):85-95. doi: 10.1002/evan.20296.
On the northern tip of New Zealand's South Island, bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) occasionally pass through Admiralty Bay in large, fast-traveling groups of 100 or so individuals. Watching such a group race and splash through the water is reminiscent of a stampeding herd of ungulates, cetaceans' closest terrestrial ancestors. At other times, smaller social groups of bottlenose dolphins appear in the bay and provide a glimpse of the behavioral complexity that dolphins share with their distant relatives, the primates (Fig. 1). Despite being evolutionarily separated for 95 million years and evolving in vastly different environments, cetaceans and primates share striking similarities in behavior, socioecological problem-solving, life-history patterns, and cognitive capacity. By comparing attributes shared by primates and cetaceans, distraction from phylogenetic "noise" is minimized and our understanding of evolutionary pathways is enhanced. In particular, cetaceans provide a powerful outgroup for studying the evolution of primate social organization.
在新西兰南岛的北端，宽吻海豚（Tursiops truncatus）偶尔会以大约 100 只左右的大群快速游过阿德默勒尔蒂湾。观看这样的一群海豚在水中疾驰和飞溅，让人想起了狂奔的有蹄类动物群，它们是鲸目动物最近的陆地祖先。其他时候，较小的宽吻海豚社交群体出现在海湾中，让人们瞥见了海豚与它们遥远的灵长类亲戚（图 1）所共有的行为复杂性。尽管它们已经进化分离了 9500 万年，并且在截然不同的环境中进化，但鲸目动物和灵长类动物在行为、社会生态问题解决、生活史模式和认知能力方面有着惊人的相似之处。通过比较灵长类动物和鲸目动物共有的属性，可以最大限度地减少系统发育“噪音”的干扰，并增强我们对进化途径的理解。特别是，鲸目动物为研究灵长类动物社会组织的进化提供了一个强大的外群。
