{"id":741731,"date":"2026-06-17T05:50:33","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T05:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/741731\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T05:50:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T05:50:33","slug":"how-female-dolphins-know-which-males-to-avoid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/741731\/","title":{"rendered":"How female dolphins know which males to avoid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Another possibility, she adds, is that females avoid males they&#8217;ve already mated with. This could be a female strategy to mate with many males so that no male knows for sure whether a calf is his\u2014a theory that Sayigh says is also strong. This could help protect calves from being harmed as infanticide is a documented behavior in male dolphins.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">For Mann, it\u2019s not necessarily surprising that females would avoid specific males, especially when they are likely to be cycling. Previous research has shown that female dolphins in Shark Bay <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/beheco\/article-abstract\/29\/2\/377\/4774302?redirectedFrom=fulltext\" dir=\"ltr\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">avoid adult males generally<\/a> when more than one male is present, which is when they tend to be more aggressive, she says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">\u201cWhat is unique is showing that females are responding to specific male signature whistles,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Sayigh agrees. \u201cThe fact that they use their knowledge of signature whistles and of the individuals that are linked to those signature whistles to guide socially informed decisions is a really important contribution,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">There is still more to uncover about their relationships and choices during mating, and the mechanism underlying how females are making this choice to avoid males, whether it&#8217;s associating a male&#8217;s whistle with past experiences, recognizing specific males and remembering their behavioral history, or learning about males by observing how they treat other females.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another possibility, she adds, is that females avoid males they&#8217;ve already mated with. This could be a female&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":741732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,141475,357632,357634,357633,75,128,141473],"class_list":["post-741731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bottlenose-dolphin","tag-bottlenose-dolphin-group-behavior","tag-consortship","tag-dolphins-mating","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-shark-bay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}