For decades, researchers probing animal creativity have relied on trained paradigms, in which an animal is cued to produce a novel behavior and rewarded for originality. Dolphins have excelled in such studies, famously inventing new tricks on command, but critics have noted a limitation: those tasks measure creativity only under stimulus control, shaped by human expectations and reinforcement schedules. The new study took a different route. Instead of asking dolphins to perform, the team examined object play, a naturally occurring, self-initiated behavior, and asked whether it displayed two key features associated with creative cognition: fluency, meaning the diversity and frequency of behaviors produced, and elaboration, meaning the sequential organization of those behaviors into increasingly complex chains.

The researchers analyzed video footage of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) housed at the Roatan Institute for Marine Sciences in Honduras and wild Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) studied near Bimini in the Bahamas. Data collection at both sites was funded and organized through the Dolphin Communication Project, and all observations were non-invasive, relying on footage rather than direct interference with the animals. Trained coders, using the event-logging software BORIS, marked each object play event and broke it down into its component behaviors, the type of object involved, and the social context in which it occurred. That granular coding allowed the team to apply quantitative measures of fluency and elaboration rather than relying on anecdotal impressions of playfulness.

The results revealed striking patterns that differed between the two populations. Among the managed-care bottlenose dolphins, object play varied significantly by sex and age. Males accounted for 66.2 percent of recorded play events, and their interactions were dominated by jawing, a mouthing behavior. Females, by contrast, showed greater behavioral diversity, with high proportions of carrying and pushing behaviors. Age mattered as well: younger dolphins showed higher frequencies of jawing, while older individuals engaged in more complex manipulation behaviors. The objects themselves were used differently across the sexes, with males primarily interacting with a single object category and females more frequently engaging with leaves and seagrass. These differences hint that play may serve different developmental and social functions across demographic groups.

The wild Atlantic spotted dolphins told a different story. In this population, the researchers found no significant differences in object play across sex or age, and interactions were overwhelmingly dominated by seaweed, which featured in at least 81 percent of play events across all groups. The contrast between the two species is intriguing: the managed-care bottlenose dolphins, living in an environment with access to a wider variety of objects, displayed a richer and more differentiated play repertoire, while the wild spotted dolphins converged on a single favored material. Whether that reflects ecological opportunity, species differences, or the different social structures of the two populations remains an open question that the authors frame as a direction for future work.

Perhaps the most technically significant finding came from lag sequential analysis, a statistical method that examines whether one behavior reliably predicts the next in a sequence. The analysis revealed structured, non-random behavioral organization in the object play of both populations. In other words, dolphins were not simply grabbing objects and doing whatever came next; their play followed discernible patterns of transitions from one action to another. The bottlenose dolphins exhibited more diverse behavior transitions than the spotted dolphins, suggesting a broader repertoire of possible play sequences. This kind of sequential structure is precisely what the elaboration criterion requires: evidence that play behaviors are chained together in organized ways rather than emitted as isolated, disconnected actions.

Going a step further, the team applied higher-order analyses that looked beyond immediate transitions to identify behavioral associations spanning longer stretches of the play sequence. These analyses identified associations beyond the immediate next-step level, supporting the interpretation that dolphins elaborate on their play, building extended, organized sequences rather than repeating simple two-step patterns. In the framework of creative cognition, elaboration is considered a marker of generative thinking, the capacity to take an initial idea or action and develop it into something more complex. Finding that signature in spontaneous play, without any training or prompting, strengthens the argument that object play can serve as a proxy for creativity in dolphins.

The study, which formed part of the lead author’s master’s thesis at Nova Southeastern University, contributes to a growing body of work suggesting that innovative and flexible behaviors in non-human animals are indicators of cognitive sophistication. Dolphins have long been candidates for such claims, given their large brains, complex social lives, and documented vocal and behavioral innovations. But demonstrating creativity rigorously requires more than charm; it requires measurable structure. By quantifying fluency and elaboration in an unprompted behavior, the researchers provided exactly that, and they did so across two ecologically distinct populations, which adds weight to the conclusion that structured object play is a real feature of dolphin behavior rather than an artifact of captivity or human interaction.

There are caveats worth keeping in mind. The managed-care sample lived in an environment where humans provide objects and where the dolphins’ daily experience differs profoundly from that of wild animals, and the wild data came from a single study site with a narrow range of available materials. Play itself remains notoriously difficult to define, and inferring internal states such as creativity from external behavior is inherently an interpretive act. The authors are careful to describe object play as a window into spontaneous creativity rather than definitive proof of it. Still, the demonstration that play in both populations is statistically non-random and elaborated moves the conversation forward in a way that purely observational anecdotes cannot.

The broader implications reach beyond dolphins. If spontaneous object play can be rigorously analyzed for fluency and elaboration, the same toolkit could be applied to other species, from primates to corvids to cetaceans yet unstudied, offering a common metric for comparing creative capacities across the animal kingdom. For dolphins specifically, the study suggests that the playful dolphin twirling seaweed at the surface may be exercising a form of behavioral innovation that parallels, in its structure, the creative processes psychologists study in humans. As the authors conclude, object play offers a way to better understand dolphin cognitive capacity in novel situations, and it does so on the dolphins’ own terms, in behavior they choose freely, without a trainer, a cue, or a reward in sight.

Subject of Research: Spontaneous object play as a measure of creativity in bottlenose and Atlantic spotted dolphins

Article Title: Fluency and elaboration in dolphin object play: evidence for creativity in behavioral exchanges?

Article References: Fluency and elaboration in dolphin object play: evidence for creativity in behavioral exchanges?. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-026-02117-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10071-026-02117-6

Keywords: dolphins, object play, creativity, animal cognition, bottlenose dolphins, Atlantic spotted dolphins, fluency, elaboration, behavioral sequences, play behavior, cetacean cognition, lag sequential analysis