[imagesource: Stephan Frink / Getty Images]

Okay, fess up, who dropped their copy of The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neil Strauss into the ocean?

Dolphins seem to have got their fins on it, learning to help one another find mates and fight off competitors in rather human-like ways that scientists hadn’t previously anticipated.

We all know that dolphins are smart and enjoy sex similarly to humans, but this new information paints a far more interesting picture of these water dwellers.

As The Daily Beast put it, new research has shown that just like humans, dolphins also use wingmen to try to woo women:

In a paper published Monday in the journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of researchers observed a multi-level alliance network between 121 male bottlenose dolphins off the coast of Western Australia.

They found that the males would create cooperative relationship networks with one another in order to help each other court female dolphins.

AKA, get laid.

Now that we know dolphins are one of the only other non-primate animals that are capable of creating organised social networks so that they can have sex, saying “it’s all about the motion in the ocean” takes on a whole new meaning.

Over to Stephanie King, a biologist at the University of Bristol and co-lead author of the paper, for more:

“Cooperation between allies is widespread in human societies and one of the hallmarks of our success,” King [sic] said in a press release. “Our capacity to build strategic, cooperative relationships at multiple social levels, such as trade or military alliances both nationally and internationally, was once thought unique to our species.”

Clearly, we’ve been knocked off that pedestal:

According to the study, the dolphins form several levels of alliances: first-order alliances, which are two to three males who pursue and guard individual females; second-order alliances, which are four to 14 unrelated males (typically several different first order alliances); and third-order alliances, which are combinations of several second-order alliances. These groups work together to help herd and protect female dolphins from outside groups.

The Guardian explains further:

Dolphins’ social structures are fluid and complex. The researchers found alliances among two or three male dolphins – like best friends. Then the groups expanded to up to 14 members.

Together, they helped each other find females to herd and mate with, and they help steal females from other dolphins as well as defend against any “theft” attempts from rivals.

“It’s a significant investment that starts when they’re very young – and these relationships can last their entire lives,” said King.

That sounds far more complicated than the horny schemes hatched up by the people I know.

King went on to say that the research sheds even more light on “the evolution of characteristics previously thought to be uniquely human”.

Scientists are also thinking about the “social brain” hypothesis, which explains that mammals’ brains evolved to be larger in size for animals that keep track of their social interactions and networks. Humans and dolphins are the two animals with the largest brains relative to body size, which is not a coincidence.

In fact, some scientists are even debating whether or not we should consider dolphins as people.

This all evokes the famous story of Margaret Lovatt who developed a strange, and somewhat sexual relationship with a dolphin during a NASA-funded project to communicate with the creatures:

Anyway, we’re not the only mammals that have adopted cooperation as an evolutionary trait. Dolphins, too, understand that working together is better than working apart.

We might actually want to take a page from a dolphin’s book more often.

[source:dailybeast&guardian]