The Ashtamudi estuary in south Kerala is one of the three locations across the globe picked for a multi-institutional collaborative study on the evolution of cooperation between dolphins and humans.

The University of Kerala has signed a memorandum of agreement with the Oregon State University, U.S., for the project titled ‘The Ecology and Evolution of Cultural and Cooperative Behaviour among Dolphins and Humans.’ The project is supported by the National Geographic Society and The Wildlife Intelligence Project.

It will look at interactions between humans and humpback dolphins in the Ashtamudi estuary, and bottlenose dolphins in Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady River and the Tramandai inlet in Brazil. “The evolution of cooperation is one of the most debated topics in science. While the discussion focusses on human-wildlife conflicts, there are a few instances of dolphin-human cooperation in fishing. This collaborative research project studies dolphin-fisher interactions in these regions and examines how net-casting fishers and dolphins work together to catch fish, benefiting both humans and wild dolphins,” the University of Kerala said.

Using instruments such as hydrophones and drones, direct photo-documentation of dolphins and their interactions, and interactions with fishers, researchers will try to understand how dolphins and fishers interact. Such human-wildlife interactions raise key questions about how cooperative behaviours evolve in the wild and why they are rare across species.

Working in these three places where this cooperation still exists, the research team will test if the similar behaviour has evolved in all three study locations. Further, if the nature of all human-dolphin interactions is cooperative, the research will also identify whether specific ecological conditions have contributed to the evolution of this cooperation.

Through this project, which is scheduled till March 2028, University of Kerala’s Department of Aquatic Biology and Fisheries will receive $1,27,006 (nearly ₹1.2 crore). Researchers from the university will also be trained in long-term monitoring of human-dolphin systems and raising awareness on the rare and declining cooperation between wild animals and humans.

The project is internationally led by Mauricio Canter, head of the Laboratory for Animal Behavioral Interaction Research, Oregon State University, and in India by A. Biju Kumar, Head, Department of Aquatic Biology and Fisheries and Vice-Chancellor of Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies (KUFOS), and Dipani Sutaria, Project Scientist. “This collaboration is highly relevant to India as Ashtamudi Lake is among the very few places in the world where humans and wild dolphins demonstrate cooperative interactions that benefit both species,” Dr. Biju Kumar said.

Mohanan Kunnummal, Vice-Chancellor, University of Kerala, expressed the hope that the project would evolve as a classical example of interdisciplinary and collaborative learning, integrating behavioural ecology, marine biology, fisheries science, acoustics, artificial intelligence-supported analyses, and community-based research through international collaboration.