What specific aspects of dolphin behaviour and communication did you find most fascinating during your research and what made you tell the story from their perspectives? For instance if you’re brought up in a very hippy-ish community that only acknowledges love and peace, or a very wealthy family that only values privacy and luxury, yet you can see the strife and pain in the world beyond - you might feel painfully lonely, or even a bit mad. I also wanted to explore how a culture can become so stuck in its rules and customs, that an individual can feel stifled if they don’t easily fit in. Because they live in matriarchal and apparently very peaceful societies (compared to the more aggressive bottlenoses) there was inherent opposition of values, therefore dramatic conflict. I did the same process with the spinner dolphins. Pulling on a thread of factual research spun into one character, then another, then a world. He would secretly come to rely on her - but perhaps a rivalrous male very close to him would know, and there would be a secret enmity between the leader’s wife, and his closest advisor. She would of course be younger, highly intelligent, beautiful - and increasingly politically skilled. I wondered how her lord Ku, the ailing leader of the megapod, might relate to her in public but also in private. and the character of Devi formed herself.

It wasn’t a great stretch to imagine how she might feel. She would have to remain subordinate to every male, despite her own qualities of leadership. Then I wondered about how the females cope in this kind of environment, and if they emulate it themselves? We know all mothers will do whatever they have to, to ensure their childrens’ safety, so what does that mean if they live in harem groups? There would surely be a dominant female.

This suggested a volatile political social structure, with all the inherent power plays, alliances and betrayals. I was struck by the fact that in bottlenose dolphin societies, the males are dominant over the females, and maintain a fluid dominance hierarchy within their own gender. Being an outsider makes you vulnerable to predators. We understand that being acknowledged as of value to the herd, or pod, or social group, makes you more central and therefore safer. We’re used to seeing leaders and followers, (social media capitalises on this even more). When you’re looking at social animals be they dolphin or human, there’s some kind of organisation and hierarchy. How did you create such believable characters, specifically dolphins, particularly in terms of their social and cultural dynamics? Author Laline Paull (Courtesy the publisher) Pod features a diverse cast of marine creatures with their own distinct cultures, languages, and social hierarchies.

The Bees by Laline Paull