Research finds that bottlenose dolphins have personality traits similar to primates

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, February 28.

Psychologists at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom and their colleagues have conducted a total of nearly 10 years of research on 134 bottlenose dolphins in multiple countries.

As we all know, the personality characteristics of monkeys and great apes are similar to humans.

According to the researchers engaged in this study, although bottlenose dolphins have adapted to life in the water, the latest time they shared a common ancestor with primates was 95 million years ago, but bottlenose dolphins have "several behavioral and cognitive characteristics".

Blake Morton, a psychologist at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom who participated in the study, said that he and his colleagues studied 134 bottlenose dolphins in Mexico, France, the United States, the Netherlands, Sweden, Bahamas and other countries, of which 56 were males and 78 were males.

Morton also stated that, like many primates, the brain capacity of bottlenose dolphins is much larger than that required to maintain the basic functions of their bodies.

Researchers concluded that no matter which ecosystem they live in, smartness and social skills may play an important role in the evolution of certain personality traits.