Anthropologists have long celebrated humans’ ability to form nested cooperative networks of unrelated individuals, from family to nations. Now, researchers have shown that sea-going Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Western Australia are the largest such complex cooperative societies outside of humans. Since 1982, behavioral ecologist Richard Connor and his team have followed more than 200 male dolphins in the clear waters of Shark Bay. In the new study, the team analyzed data collected between 2001 and 2006 on 121 individual males, revealing a super-connected social network with every male connected to one another either directly or indirectly. The males even cultivate relationships with males outside of their three-level alliances, forming the biggest network known in any nonhuman species, thereby increasing their reproductive success. The dolphins provide “a dramatic demonstration of the positive correlation between brain size and social complexity,” says Connor.
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