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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 22, 2026

Long-term Behavioral Tracking of Freely Swimming Weakly Electric Fish
10:56

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Published on: March 6, 2014

What do dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) understand about hidden objects?

Kelly Jaakkola1, Emily Guarino, Mandy Rodriguez

  • 1Dolphin Research Center, 58901 Overseas Highway, Grassy Key, FL 33050, USA. kelly@dolphins.org

Animal Cognition
|June 23, 2009
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Dolphins demonstrate object permanence for visible objects but struggle with tracking hidden items. Further research is needed to understand their cognitive abilities with invisible displacements.

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Published on: August 21, 2017

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive ethology
  • Marine mammal cognition
  • Comparative psychology

Background:

  • Object permanence is a key cognitive skill, studied in humans and terrestrial animals, but under-researched in marine species.
  • Understanding object permanence in dolphins can offer insights into cetacean intelligence and cognitive evolution.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate object permanence in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus).
  • To determine if dolphins can mentally represent objects that are out of sight.

Main Methods:

  • Four experiments were conducted using visible and invisible displacement tasks and transpositions.
  • Dolphins were trained on a 'find the object' game before task-specific testing.
  • Control conditions were used to rule out alternative explanations for task success.

Main Results:

  • Dolphins successfully completed visible displacement tasks.
  • They failed to succeed on invisible displacement and transposition tasks when containers were used.
  • Dolphins passed an invisible displacement task using a hand, but likely by learning local rules, not true object tracking.

Conclusions:

  • Bottlenose dolphins exhibit object permanence for visible displacements, similar to many terrestrial animals.
  • Evidence suggests dolphins may lack the ability to track the movement of hidden objects.
  • Further research is required to fully elucidate the nuances of object permanence in dolphins.