Inter- and intraspecies communication in marine animals

By Véronique Barthès-Haffner. A geophysicist, she spent most of her engineering career in Grenoble, at the CENG. Since retiring, she has taken a keen interest in scuba diving. She now leads groups of divers and trains them in underwater environment awareness.

In underwater life, as on land, the relationships that animals establish with each other are rich and varied but often difficult to interpret, whether they are inter-species (between different species) or intra-species (between individuals of the same species).

Even though the ultimate goal remains the survival and perpetuation of the species, the strategies employed go far beyond the "law of the jungle," where only the strongest survive and reproduce. As we have recently learned, relationships based on mutual aid and collaboration are in fact the norm.

In this presentation, we will examine relationships in the underwater world from the perspective of sociality and collaboration, using examples observed during dives or described in scientific literature.

Since the study of animal behavior (which used to be conducted only in laboratories) began to take into account the role of the environment by studying animals in their natural habitats, we have learned that they are capable of reflection, empathy, sensitivity, emotion, and even culture. The complexity of animal intelligence (which includes us humans) forms a continuum.