Social object play between captive bottlenose and Risso's dolphins

<div><p>Many animal species engage in social object play with movable objects. Two bottlenose dolphins (<i>Tursiops truncatus</i>) and one Risso’s dolphin (<i>Grampus griseus</i>) owned by the Kujukushima Aquarium, Japan, occasionally shared and played with an object. Herein, we report social object play between two dolphins exchanging a ball in water. Just before delivery of the ball, one dolphin made an action to request the ball from the dolphin that possessed the ball. This request behavior is also discussed in this report. This study is the first to report two different cetacean species engaging in social object play with one object.</p></div

An example of a bout of social object play.

<p>The vertical axis indicates the individual, and the horizontal axis indicates time. The hatched bar is the time of possession of the ball. The arrow indicates the destination of the ball. In this figure, Nami (bottlenose dolphin) possesses the ball by herself, whereas Niha (bottlenose dolphin) and Lily (Risso’s dolphin) share the ball.</p

Ball exchange between a bottlenose dolphin (Niha) and a Risso’s dolphin (Lily).

<p>Lily released the ball from her mouth and Niha caught it.</p

Data from Social object play between captive bottlenose and Risso’s dolphins

<p>The file set contains video and excel data of social object play between captive bottlenose and Risso's dolphins taken at the Kujukushima Aquarium, Umi Kirara, Japan.</p