bottlenose dolphins They smile at each other while they play. This has been confirmed by a team of researchers, who have corroborated that visual communication plays a crucial role in complex social interactions in many species.
Dolphins are extremely playful, but little is known about how they, and other marine mammals, communicate during play. A new investigation, the results of which were published this Wednesday by the magazine iSciencehas proven that bottlenose dolphins use the facial expression “open mouth” -analogous to a smile- to communicate during social play.
As demonstrated in the extract provided by the scientific journal to the media, these animals almost always use this facial expression when they are in the field of vision of their playmates. Furthermore, when they perceive a “smile”, it has been shown that They respond the same way 33% of the time.
Other mammals use facial expressions to communicate their playfulness. The open, relaxed mouth, seen in many social carnivores, in the play faces of monkeys and even in human laughter, is a universal sign, helping animals, and humans, to point out that it is fun and thus avoid conflicts. However, until now it had not been studied whether marine mammals were also capable of changing their features to indicate that they were playing.
In the case of dolphins, their entertainment It can include acrobatics, surfing, playing with objects, chasing and play fighting, and it is important that these activities are not misinterpreted as aggression, as observed by the scientists, who have been coordinated by researchers from the University of Pisa. To investigate whether dolphins visually communicate their playfulness, researchers They recorded captive bottlenose dolphins while they were playing in pairs and while playing freely with their human trainers.
