In January of 2005, Michal Krutzen and his team out of Sydney, Australia released a paper discussing their discoveries that the tool use seen in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) for hunting is a trait that mothers teach their daughters. This discovery has once again opened up conversation to classifying the ability of dolphins, a member of the order cetacean, to learn, maintain and pass on various traits as culture.
But what is culture? And how can this concept, verbalized  to connotatively refer to humans, apply to animals? Culture, as it pertains to human and animal life can be considered a series of shared behaviors that are created and maintained through social learning. This site explores the evolution and development of cetaceans and their culture focusing mostly on the sponge use of bottlenosed dolphins.

Picture: Nationalgeographic.com

Michael Krutzen's released work on the culture of bottle nosed dolphins can be read here: Cultural Transmission of Tool Use in Bottlenose Dolphins