Not only primates and cetaceans, but also other long-lived mammals, like elephants, have females playing active (crucial) post-reproductive roles.
There is one behavioural pattern seen in group-living cetaceans that is individually maladaptive but could have arisen within a system of conformist traditions: mass stranding.
Studies of cetaceans have uncovered a number of patterns of behaviour and vocalizations, which some cetologists have ascribed to cultural processes.
Although the available evidence is consistent with the notion of culture in cetaceans, caution is warranted due to the many gaps in the data.
The latter seems to be a feature of dolphins and other cetaceans (exploited in oceanaria shows, where two performers leap and dive together).
Observations can provide additional insights into the products of culture that are important to cetaceans, as well as into the processes that might be involved.
Consequently, the implication in the target article that, because cetaceans have vocal traditions, they can learn other motor acts by imitation, is not convincing.
Culture may be an ancestral characteristic of terrestrial cetacean ancestors; not derived via marine variability, modern cetacean mobility, or any living cetacean social structure.
