To what end? To help males court females.

It turns out even dolphins need a "wingman" sometimes. Besides humans, study authors report male bottlenose dolphins form the largest multi-level alliance network observed by humans. The team at UB collaborated with scientists from the University of Zurich and University of Massachusetts on this project.

They used both association and consortship data to model the structure of alliances among a group of 121 adult male Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins living in Shark Bay, Western Australia. The analysis revealed that these dolphins form "first-order alliances" consisting of just two to three other males working together to cooperatively pursue mating relationships with individual females. Meanwhile, "second-order alliances" featuring four to 14 unrelated males will actively compete with other alliances over access to local female dolphins. Finally, the team even observed "third-order alliances" among cooperating second-order alliances.