Abstract
Exploration of Horizontal Information Transmission through Social Learning in Juvenile Atlantic Spotted Dolphins (Stenella frontalis)
Highlights
In animal societies, social structure and social interactions influence the direction of information transmission within a group (Coussi-Korbel & Fragaszy, 1995)
A chi-square analysis showed that, whereas there was no effect of point of focus for younger juveniles, there was a significant effect for older juveniles with older juveniles looking more at the prey than peers: there was an association between age and the point of focus prey for both body-orienting movements, with the total count of focus and turn showing that older juveniles performed more prey-directed movements than peer-directed movements (χ2(1) = 4.96, p = 0.03, N = 64), thereby focusing significantly more on the prey than on their companions
Additional chisquare tests showed that there was no effect of body-orienting movement type for younger juveniles or older juveniles, i.e., there was no significant difference between the number of focus or turn performed by younger and older juveniles
Summary
Social structure and social interactions influence the direction of information transmission within a group (Coussi-Korbel & Fragaszy, 1995). The mother teaches the calf how to fish, and, by the time weaning occurs, the calf has become an independent forager partly as a result of vertical transmission (Bender, Herzing, & Bjorklund, 2009). Horizontal transmission was observed among juvenile dolphins in both interactive and noninteractive situations (Herzing, 2005) In this dolphin community, calves become independent at three or four years old, a year marked by a reduction in nursing, an increase in time spent alone and in time spent foraging in proximity of conspecifics other than the mother, including in juvenile play-forage subgroups (Miles & Herzing, 2003). Whereas vertical transmission contributes to the development of calves' foraging behavior (Bender et al, 2009), young dolphins' acquired foraging skills may vary at weaning. The aim of the present study is to characterize horizontal transmission, and identify potential underlying social-cognitive mechanisms thereof in the free-ranging Bahamian community of Atlantic spotted dolphins
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