Martin Böye

Planète Sauvage, France · Scientific department

Visual attention is an intrinsic part of intra- and inter-specific interactions. Its structure (e.g. short glances vs. long gazes) depends on the species, type and expected outcome of the interaction. The outcomes of earlier repeated interactions determine the resulting valence of the relationships. Human-animal relationships rely upon species-spec...

Play is a widespread behavior present in phylogenetically distant taxa that, in its social form, relies on com- plex communication. Playful communication has been largely neglected in marine mammals. We focus on playful visual communication in bottlenose dolphins. The open mouth (OM) display was mainly emitted during social than during solitary pla...

Animals have evolved a wide variety of signals that punctuate social interactions, thus optimizing communication systems. In the study of communicative strategies, real and play fighting are good models, as they are associated with risks and injuries. Therefore, within these two domains, clear 'statement' signals should be recruited to disambiguate...

During risky interactions like social play, motor resonance phenomena such as facial mimicry can be highly adaptive. Here, we studied Rapid Facial Mimicry (RFM, the automatic mimicking of a playmate’s facial expression, play faces) during play fighting between young rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) living in a large zoo-housed group. For the first...

Dolphins are known for their complex vocal communication, not least because of their capacity for acoustic plasticity. Paradoxically , we know little about their capacity for flexible vocal use. The difficulty in describing the behaviours performed underwater while vocalizing makes it difficult to analyse the contexts of emissions. Dolphins' main v...

An intense public debate has fuelled governmental bans on marine mammals held in zoological institutions. The debate rests on the assumption that survival in zoological institutions has been and remains lower than in the wild, albeit the scientific evidence in support of this notion is equivocal. Here, we used statistical methods previously applied...

Study of animal communication and its potential social role implies associating signals to an emitter. This has been a major limitation in the study of cetacean communication as they produce sounds underwater with no distinctive behavioral signs. Different techniques have been used to identify callers, but all proved to have ethical or practical li...

Sensory laterality is influenced by the individual's attentional state. There are variations in the way different individuals of a same species attend to stimuli. When confronted to novelty, some individuals are more explorative than others. Curiosity is composed of sensation and knowledge seeking in humans. In the present study, we hypothesized th...

Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) spontaneously emit individual acoustic signals that identify them to group members. We tested whether these cetaceans could learn artificial individual sound cues played underwater and whether they would generalize this learning to airborne sounds. Dolphins are thought to perceive only underwater sounds and...

Under natural conditions bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) spend their time mostly feeding and then travelling, socializing, or resting. These activities are not randomly distributed, with feeding being higher in early morning and late afternoon. Social activities and vocal behavior seem to be very important in dolphin daily activity. This s...

Behavioral patterns are established in response to predictable environmental cues. Animals under human care frequently experience predictable, human-controlled events each day, but very few studies have questioned exactly how behavioral patterns are affected by such activities. Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) maintained for public display...

In 2012, two marine mammal welfare and well-being workshops were held: one from 19-21 March 2012 at the Harderwijk Dolfinarium in the Netherlands, and the other from 9-11 November 2012 at Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute in San Diego, California. Well over 150 international participants attended, from Europe as well as North America. Herein, we pr...

A large part of the literature on sensory perception and behavior in dolphins is devoted to its well-developed vocal and echolocation abilities. In this review, we aim to augment current knowledge by examining the literature on dolphins' entire “Merkwelt” (which refers to everything a subject perceives, creating a crucial part of the subject's Umwe...

Chemosensory perception in cetaceans remains an intriguing issue as morphological, neuroanatomical and genetic studies draw unclear conclusions, while behavioral data suggest that dolphins may use it for food selection or socio-sexual interactions. Experimental approaches have been scarce due to the practical difficulties of testing chemoreception...

Magnetoreception, meaning the perception of magnetic fields, is supposed to play an important role for orientation/navigation in some terrestrial and aquatic species. Although some spatial observations of free-ranging cetaceans’ migration routes and stranding sites led to the assumption that cetaceans may be sensitive to the geomagnetic field, expe...

Since the 50’s, zoological institutions have undergone a deep evolution, moving from animal collections to natural habitats presentations. In modern settings visitors can experience and learn about biodiversity and are asked to be active in conservation. Animal care methods, species, enclosures are very different from what they looked like only hal...

Diurnal animals also produce sounds at night. In several roosting species, high vocal activity at the roosting site seems to be a prerequisite to sleep, suggesting a role of vocal chorusing in coordinating resting activities. Dolphins’ nocturnal vocal activity has been rarely investigated. However, this animal model is interesting because: dolphin...

Nocturnal vocal activity in dolphins is often thought to be associated with feeding activity. However, when no food resources are available dolphins spend their time for the most part resting/sleeping. While unihemispherically sleeping, dolphins mostly swim slowly and synchronously in close proximity with one or more other individuals. Although voc...

Nocturnal vocal activity in dolphins is often thought to be associated with feeding activity. However, when no food resources are available dolphins spend their time for the most part resting/sleeping. While unihemispherically sleeping, dolphins mostly swim slowly and synchronously in close proximity with one or more other individuals. Although voc...

Diurnal animals produce sounds at night. In roosting species, high vocal activity at roosting sites may be a prerequisite to sleep, suggesting a role of chorusing in coordinating resting. In other species, vocalizations during sleep are commonly reported, which in humans correspond to dream contents. Dolphins’ nocturnal vocal activity has been rare...

Many studies of cerebral asymmetries in different species lead, on the one hand, to a better understanding of the functions of each cerebral hemisphere and, on the other hand, to develop an evolutionary history of hemispheric laterality. in this context dolphins are particularly interesting because of their original evolutionary path, i.e. return t...

Delphinids are able to copy sounds from their environment that are not produced by conspecifics. So far these mimicries occur associated with the context in which they were learned. No separation between auditory memory formation and spontaneous vocal copying was observed as it is for example in songbirds. In our study we report that bottlenose dol...

It is known that delphinidae can associate heard sounds with salient events/objects and mimic these sounds, mostly in the corresponding context. Thus, one can wonder whether dolphins, as other animals and humans, have a sort of sensory memory of events. Here we show that a group of five bottlenose dolphins in the Planète Sauvage dolphinarium (Franc...

Alban Lemasson and Martine Hausberger have contributed equally to this work. The mechanisms underlying vocal mimicry in animals remain an open question. Delphinidae are able to copy sounds from their environment that are not produced by conspecifics. Usually, these mimicries occur associated with the context in which they were learned. No reports a...

Many studies of cerebral asymmetries in different species lead, on the one hand, to a better understanding of the functions of each cerebral hemisphere and, on the other hand, to develop an evolutionary history of hemispheric laterality. Our animal model is particularly interesting because of its original evolutionary path, i.e. return to aquatic l...

The mechanisms underlying vocal mimicry in animals remain an open question. Delphinidae are able to copy sounds from their environment that are not produced by conspecifics. Usually, these mimicries occur associated with the context in which they were learned. No reports address the question of separation between auditory memory formation and spont...

Example 2 of a Planète Sauvage dolphins’ WLP slowed down (factor of 0.5).

Example 1 of a Planète Sauvage dolphins’ WLP (“whale-like” production).

Example 1 of a Planète Sauvage dolphins’ WLP slowed down (factor of 0.5).

Example 2 of a Planète Sauvage dolphins’ WLP.

Understanding the evolution of brain lateralisation including the origin of human visual laterality requires an understanding of brain lateralisation in related animal species. However, little is known about the visual laterality of marine mammals. To help correct this lack, we evaluated the influence of familiarity with a human on the visual respo...

This paper explores functional hemispheric asymmetries in the perception of auditory signals in a marine mammal species, the sea lion. Using a head-orienting task toward sounds we found a right ear--left hemisphere--advantage for conspecific calls in adult and subadult California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) that was absent in infants. Non-co...