King Stephanie L, Guarino Emily, Donegan Katy, McMullen Christina, Jaakkola Kelly
School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TQ, UK.
Dolphin Research Center, 58901 Overseas Highway, Grassy Key, FL 33050, USA.
R Soc Open Sci. 2021 Mar 17;8(3):202073. doi: 10.1098/rsos.202073.
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.
长期以来，合作实验一直被用于探究动物为实现共同目标而进行协作背后的认知机制。虽然在许多物种中都已证明它们具备理解合作任务中对伙伴需求的能力，但对于涉及沟通作用的合作实验，关注却少得多。在人类中，身体同步能够增强合作努力，使用口语可以解决协调问题。事实上，人类儿童通过发出声音信号进行交流来适应复杂的协调问题。在此，我们研究宽吻海豚是否能够在合作按键任务中使用声音信号来协调它们的行为。在本研究中使用的两对海豚，在按键前发出哨声时，成功合作的可能性显著更高，发出哨声导致更短的按键间隔和更多成功的试验。哨声的时机很重要，因为如果海豚在最后一声哨声后一起按键，而不是独立于哨声发出进行按键，它们成功的可能性会显著更高。宽吻海豚在野外广泛合作是众所周知的，虽然野生海豚如何利用沟通来协调合作仍有待观察，但我们的结果表明，至少一些海豚能够使用声音信号来促进协调的合作行动的成功执行。
