Here are 3 people-animal collaborations besides dolphins and Brazilians

We’ve all heard that dogs are a man’s best friend, but our canine companions don’t make up the entirety of humankind’s friend circle. Humans have cooperated with wild animals throughout our evolutionary history, forming reciprocally beneficial relationships known to biologists as mutualisms.

One particularly piscine partnership that made headlines recently can be found in Brazil, where fishers catch nets full of fish with the aid of the local bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus gephyreus).

This team-up started over a century ago, probably when fishers first noticed that the presence of dolphins was a clue that fish were hiding in the murky water, says Mauricio Cantor, a behavioral ecologist at Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute in Newport.

“The dolphins are really good at detecting fish…