Abstract

Almost four decades of research on Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia, has revealed a complex structure of nested alliance formation among unrelated males, as well as culturally transmitted tool use, providing striking parallels in social complexity and behavioural richness to some human societies. The nested alliance levels mean that dolphins need to keep track of many different relationships, both at the individual and alliance level, which poses significant cognitive challenges. I will use long-term field data to reveal some of the key research on the communicative and cognitive mechanisms underpinning bottlenose dolphin cooperation. Namely, how individual vocal labels similar to human names, long-term social memory and cooperative behavioural synchrony facilitate extensive within and between-group cooperation in this system.