Generalization of ‘same–different’ classification abilities in bottlenosed dolphins

Abstract

Two bottlenosed dolphins taught to classify pairs of three-dimensional objects as either same or different were tested with novel stimulus sets to determine how well their classification abilities would generalize. Both dolphins were immediately able to classify novel pairs of planar objects, differing only in shape, as same or different. When tested on sets of three objects consisting of either all different objects or of two identical objects and one different object, both dolphins proved to be able to classify ‘all different’ sets as different and ‘not all different’ sets as same, at levels significantly above chance. These data suggest that dolphins can use knowledge about similarity-based classification strategies gained from previous training to perform successfully in a variety of novel same–different classification tasks. Visual classificatory abilities of dolphins appear to be comparable to those that have been demonstrated in primates.