It's teamwork: how dolphins learn to work together for rewards

September 18, 2018 9.00pm EDT

Cooperation can be found across the animal kingdom, in behaviours such as group hunting, raising of young, and driving away predators.

But are these cooperating animals actively coordinating their behaviour, or are they simply acting individually to accomplish the same task at the same time?

In a study, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, we showed that bottlenose dolphins actively coordinate their behaviours. That is, they can learn to work together and synchronise their actions to solve a cooperation task and receive a reward.

Testing teamwork

For this study, conducted at the Dolphin Research Center in the Florida Keys, we created a task in which pairs of dolphins had to swim across a lagoon and each press their own underwater button at the same time (within a 1-second time window).

More:
https://theconversation.com/its-teamwork-how-dolphins-learn-to-work-together-for-rewards-103331