What is it about?
Using sound playbacks and drone-mounted video in Shark Bay, Western Australia, we show that female dolphins use the unique calls of individual males to inform their social decisions. Females showed stronger avoidance responses to males known to engage in more coercive behaviour, revealing that they track and remember the behaviour of specific individuals over time to navigate their social relationships.
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Photo by NOAA on Unsplash
Why is it important?
While it was already known that male dolphins use individual vocal labels to track their cooperative relationships with allies, this study shows that females use the same signals to track and evaluate males based on their coercive behaviour. This adds an important new dimension to our understanding of how communication and cognition shape social decision-making in a complex mammalian society, and highlights how females actively manage their relationships with males.
Perspectives
In coercive mating systems, it can be easy to focus on male behaviour and overlook the active role that females play. One of the things I find most rewarding about this study is that it adds to a growing body of evidence showing that females are strategic players even in the most challenging social environments. I am glad to have contributed to a better understanding of the complex mechanisms that underpin relationships between females and males in mammals.
Alice Bouchard
University of Bristol
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Female dolphins use individual vocal labels to track coercive males, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, June 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2531602123.
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