  Social animals have to take into consideration the behaviour of conspecifics
when making decisions to go by their daily lives. These decisions affect their
fitness and there is therefore an evolutionary pressure to try making the right
choices. In many instances individuals will make their own choices and the
behaviour of the group will be a democratic integration of all decisions.
However, in some instances it can be advantageous to follow the choice of a few
individuals in the group if they have more information regarding the situation
that has arisen. Here I provide early evidence that decisions about shifts in
activity states in a population of bottlenose dolphin follow such a decision
making process. This unshared consensus is mediated by a non-vocal signal which
can be communicated globally within the dolphin school. These signals are
emitted by individuals that tend to have more information about the behaviour
of potential competitors because of their position in the social network. I
hypothesise that this decision making process emerged from the social structure
of the population and the need to maintain mixed-sex schools.
