Dolphins can pick up new hunting skills from non-family members just like great apes — and don’t always need mum to teach them the ropes, a study has found.

Biologists watched dolphins off of the Australian coast pick up a hunting technique — involving shaking hidden prey out of discarded shells — by mimicking each other.

Learning outside of the mother–calf bond — so-called ‘horizontal transmission’ — has never been seen in dolphins before, although it is common in gorillas and humans.

Dolphins can pick up new hunting skills from non-family members just like great apes — and don’t always need mum to teach them the ropes, a study has found. Pictured, a dolphin in Western Australia’s Shark’s Bay shakes a fish out of the shell it was hiding in

Biologists watched dolphins off of the Australian coast pick up a hunting technique — involving shaking hidden prey out of discarded shells — by mimicking each other

‘These results were quite surprising as dolphins tend to be conservative, with calves following a “do-as-mother-does” strategy for learning foraging behaviours,’ said paper author and biologist Sonja Wild of Leeds University.

‘However, our results show that dolphins are definitely capable — and in the case of shelling, also motivated — to learn foraging tactics outside the mother-calf bond.’

In their study, Dr Wild and colleagues carried out boat-based surveys of dolphins in Western Australia’s Shark’s Bay — where they witnessed the creatures using a foraging technique called ‘shelling’.

This is used by dolphins to get at prey that has hidden from them in giant empty sea snail shells that can be found on the seafloor.

The mammals carry the shells to the surface using their beaks before shaking the trapped fish out of the hiding place and into their mouths.