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Cultural transmission of tool use in bottlenose dolphins - PubMed

️Sat Jan 01 2005

Cultural transmission of tool use in bottlenose dolphins

Michael Krützen et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005.

Abstract

In Shark Bay, wild bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.) apparently use marine sponges as foraging tools. We demonstrate that genetic and ecological explanations for this behavior are inadequate; thus, "sponging" classifies as the first case of an existing material culture in a marine mammal species. Using mitochondrial DNA analyses, we show that sponging shows an almost exclusive vertical social transmission within a single matriline from mother to female offspring. Moreover, significant genetic relatedness among all adult spongers at the nuclear level indicates very recent coancestry, suggesting that all spongers are descendents of one recent "Sponging Eve." Unlike in apes, tool use in this population is almost exclusively limited to a single matriline that is part of a large albeit open social network of frequently interacting individuals, adding a new dimension to charting cultural phenomena among animals.

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Figures

**Fig. 1.**
Wild bottlenose dolphin foraging with marine sponge (photograph by M.R.H.).

**Fig. 2.**
Distribution of mtDNA haplotypes and sampling locations of spongers and nonspongers.

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Cultural transmission of tool use in bottlenose dolphins - PubMed