Risso' s dolphins plan foraging dives

Humans remember the past and use that information to plan future actions. Lab experiments that test memory for the location of food show that animals have a similar capability to act in anticipation of future needs, but less work has been done on animals foraging in the wild. We hypothesized that planning abilities are critical and common in breath-hold divers who adjust each dive to forage on prey varying in quality, location, and predictability within constraints of limited oxygen availability. We equipped Risso &' s dolphins with sound-and-motion-recording tags to reveal where they focus their attention through their externally observable echolocation and how they fine-tune search strategies in response to expected and observed prey distribution. The dolphins &' information was integrated with synoptic prey data obtained from echosounders on an underwater vehicle. At the start of the dives, whales adjusted their echolocation inspection ranges in ways that suggest planning to ...