Male dolphins form lifelong bonds that help them find mates, research finds

Four male bottlenose dolphins and a female. New research suggests male dolphins form decade-long social bonds to help each other find mates. Photograph: Simon Allen

Dolphins form decade-long social bonds, and cooperate among and between cliques, to help one another find mates and fight off competitors, new research has found – behaviour not previously confirmed among animals.

“These dolphins have long-term stable alliances, and they have intergroup alliances. Alliances of alliances of alliances, really,” said Dr Richard Connor, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and one of the lead authors of the paper. “But before our study, it had been thought that cooperative alliances between groups were unique to humans.”