Exploring Marine Mammal Cognition as a Conservation Tool

Abstract

Cognition is an animal's real‐time adaptation system for responding to change. Rapid environmental change, often anthropogenic, is expanding the range and severity of challenges confronting wild animals. Effective conservation requires a multifaceted approach that includes animals' capacities. Large‐brained, long‐lived animals such as marine mammals often have extensive capability to adaptively modify their behavior due to their cognition, which comprises the mechanisms of information acquisition, processing, and flexible action. Consequently, current behavior need not be a final predictor of future behavior for these animals. This flexibility provides an underutilized and under examined point of leverage for humans interested in improving life outcomes for wild animals. In this team‐written, interdisciplinary paper, we argue that application of cognitive approaches may facilitate many conservation efforts directed toward marine mammals. Starting with a workshop on this topic at the 24th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals, scientists representing a wide range of disciplinary expertise addressed eight different conservation concerns for six marine mammal species and provided potential cognitive explanations of and interventions aimed at related behavior. Our treatment highlights the value of integrated laboratory and field research, and the importance of tight lines of communication between scientists and conservation managers.

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