Definition
Cetacean cognition concerns thinking mechanisms like perception, memory, and forms of communication in dolphins and whales. Cetaceans are divided into two suborders: odontocetes (toothed dolphins and whales) and mysticetes (baleen whales).
Introduction
Cetaceans’ ancestors were land mammals, but the first “whales” appeared a very long time ago – more than 50 million years in the past – and adaptation to aquatic life occurred slowly over the millennia. Not only did those adaptations include shifts like the movement of the “nostrils” from the front to the top of the head (today’s “blowhole”), but they also led to changes in systems critical to cognition like sensory and perceptual processes and the structure of the brain, which in turn coevolved with effective behaviors for life in the water. Here we discuss some of those processes and behaviors with specific focus on perception, communication, social learning, learning and memory, and other...
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Harley, H.E., Bauer, G.B. (2017). Cetacean Cognition. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_997-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_997-1
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