Abstract
Cognition in bottlenose dolphins has been researched since the 1950s. Variability in cognitive abilities has been observed during social interactions, foraging, and play among wild and managed care populations. To better understand cognitive processes and their synchronous and cooperative components, the create behavior was trained and investigated among multiple species and on an individual level. The create task consisted of a subject being asked to offer behaviors of their choosing; subsequent asks required the subject to offer different behaviors than previously displayed in the test trial. To be successful, the animal must remember what behaviors they had previously offered and continue to vary their response. Tandem create expands on the individual create task, seeking to examine the interactions of two animals while they simultaneously offered the create behavior. Although a descriptive account of the various behaviors offered will be examined, subjects must perform the same behavior to execute the task successfully. Other essential components that were examined were the leader, if the offered behaviors were in the same direction or mirrored, or if the animals offered the same behavior simultaneously. In this study, archived data from a pair of Atlantic bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) were asked to perform tandem create. The pair included one subject who mastered the create behavior and another subject who was naive to the task. The offered behaviors for both successful and failed trials were then examined to assess the success rate, behavior type, and strategies observed when asked the create behavior. Results showed that relationships between tandem success and behaviors, testing days, total trials, asks, and leader were significant; however the one relationship that was determined not significant was between tandem success and vocalization presence. When assessing the results, it was noted that smaller behaviors had more tandem success, BB was the leader more often and had a higher tandem success rate, and tandem success rates increased overall from the first testing day and total trial to the last. In conclusion, this project has been significantly important to allow a greater insight into animal cognition and social learning within Atlantic bottlenose dolphins.