"Cooooooommmmmmmeeeeeeeee heeeerrrrrreeeee . . . . Momma dolphin has something to say".

Mother dolphins shift their signature whistles to higher frequencies and have larger bandwidths when calling to their dependent calves during separations involving stranded health assessments compared with separations when the calf is absent. While this shift may reflect a version of "child-directed communication," more research is needed to understand the parameters and function of this phenomenon.

Cetacean responses to violation of expectation paradigm in a free-swim context.

The investigation of individual responses to unexpected stimuli or outcomes provides insights into basic cognitive processes, such as mental representations, emotional states of surprise, and detections of anomalies. Three experiments using a violation of expectation paradigm were conducted with 12 belugas and 17 bottlenose dolphins in managed care to test two classes of stimuli (humans and objects) in manipulated sequences of familiar and unfamiliar humans (Study 1, trainers and strangers), familiar and unfamiliar objects (Study 2, typical enrichment devices and new objects), and finally objects and humans (Study 3). Gaze durations were assessed for each condition in a given study during free-swim contexts. The results supported previous findings that visual stimuli, regardless of class, were stimulating and intriguing for both belugas and bottlenose dolphins. Belugas were more likely to gaze longer at human and object stimuli and tended to gaze longer at unexpected experiences than control or expected experiences. Bottlenose dolphins showed similar trends except when objects were involved. Individual variability was present for both species with some individuals showing stronger patterns of responses for expected experiences than others. After 2 years of intermittent experiments, belugas and bottlenose dolphins in managed care maintained their curiosity about visual stimuli, for which they received no primary reinforcement. Investigating responses to unexpected stimuli with animals in managed care may provide insight into how these animals respond to biologically relevant conditions, such as boat presence, predators, and unfamiliar conspecifics.

Investigation of lateralization of socio-sexual behavior in belugas (Delphinapterus leucas).

The majority of cetacean research suggests a right side/left cerebral hemisphere bias for processing visuospatial information and a left side/right cerebral hemisphere bias for processing social information. Beluga (Delphinapterus leucas) socio-sexual behavior involves motor skills coordination and is also hypothesized to serve a social function. The present study assessed whether 14 belugas in managed care displayed side bias in their lateral socio-sexual presentation behavior. No species-level bias was found, the majority of individuals did not display a side bias, and side use was not dependent on sex of the recipient, although some influence of swim direction was found. Only males had a statistically significant but small left side preference. Furthermore, there was a linear correlation with the left side being used increasingly more over Years 1-6 of life. This study suggests that belugas do not display consistent laterality of socio-sexual presentation behavior, which is in contrast to the laterality of mother-calf positions for belugas and the high levels of laterality that are reported for some behaviors of other cetacean species. Thus, it seems that beluga socio-sexual presentation behavior is flexible and may serve both motor skills practice and social functions, which likely involve both cerebral hemispheres as a cognitively engaging behavior.