Play, as Stephen Miller of Harvard has put it, is a “soup of behavior,” something we recognize when we see it, but find hard to pin down in language. Miller studied zoo-goers watching animals at play and found that they were quite consistent in what they labeled as play, noting, for example, that “it didn’t look like it was for real” or that the animals “looked like they were enjoying themselves.” Scientists, however, found it far more difficult to label the diverse behaviors of play. Miller believes that the zoo-goers were almost certainly responding to a wide variety of cues which, because of their very subtlety (and, one would also guess, their effects on ancient, preverbal portions of the brain), scientists felt unable to measure objectively.
There are several typical features of play. Physical movements are often exaggerated; they are much slower or faster than usual, or much larger or smaller. Animals at play, Miller observes, move in ways that display “much flailing, bobbing, exaggeration, and indirect, ineffective action. In short … a ‘galumphing’ appearance.” “Galumphing,” borrowed from its inventor, Lewis Carroll, is a nearly perfect word. The O.E.D. notes that it is reminiscent of “gallop” and “triumphant,” conveying a sense of “marching on exultingly with irregular bounding movements.” Carroll, a master of linking play with pleasure and wit, used “galumphing” in The Hunting of the Snark to describe the actions of the seagoing, lacemaking Beaver, who, having hunted the Snark, “went simply galumphing about.” The slaying of the Jabberwock, in Through the Looking Glass, also entails galumphing:
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
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“O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
“Galumphing” completely captures the joy and bounce of play: it is a word that sounds as play is; is in itself inventive, as play is; and is as open to meaning and possibility as the freewheelingness of play.
The exaggerated, cavorting quality of play acts in part to signal to other animals that it, and not other, more aggressive behavior, is intended. Rhesus monkeys running to play, for example, are distinguished by their bouncing locomotion and rotating heads or torsos. These physical movements, like the “play face” exhibited by other primates, or like laughter in humans, invite other members of the species to play. The relaxed facial expressions of black bear cubs convey playful intent, as do the highly specific positionings of their large and mobile ears. There is also a repetitive characteristic to playful encounters, as well as a “mock” quality, that is, a pretending or “as if” stance toward reality. This so-called nonliterality is one of the most reliable indicators of play in children. Play, said Karl Groos, “gives the whole world of appearance a special colouring, distinguishing it from everything that is real, and rendering it impossible that even in our utmost absorption we should ever confuse the make-believe with the real.”
Play, unlike hunting or defense or most other behaviors, appears to provide little immediate benefit to the individual animal or its species. The importance of the activity seems to lie for the most part in future benefits that accrue from the process of play itself, rather than in achieving any particular short-term goal. But, as we shall see, the process is vital. It is also pleasurable, and that pleasure, to the extent it encourages social or inventive behaviors beneficial to the individual and ultimately the species, is likewise vital.
Pleasure is a largely subjective state, of course, and, until recently, animal behaviorists have been reluctant to acknowledge its presence in nonhuman species. Few, however, deny the exuberant playfulness of young mammals. George Schaller, a biologist with the New York Zoological Society, describes the ebullient behavior of a two-year-old panda after it was released from a dark cell into the outdoors: “It exploded with joy. Exuberantly it trotted up an incline with a high-stepping, lively gait, bashing down any bamboo in its path, then turned and somersaulted down, an ecstatic black and white ball rolling over and over; then it raced back up to repeat the descent, and again.”
In her classic study of Australian wombats, Barbara Triggs writes: “Wombat play is made up of several characteristic movements and attitudes performed in no particular order but with tremendous enthusiasm and exuberance. Typically, a young wombat signals the beginning of playtime by standing absolutely still with its front legs stiff and straight. Then it jerks its head and shoulders up, sometimes lifting its front feet right off the ground. Then, but not necessarily in this order, it tosses its head from side to side; jumps in the air with all four feet off the ground; rolls over on to its side; races off at a rocking gallop before coming to a sudden stop, reversing through 180 degrees ‘on the spot’ and racing back to its mother, stopping or veering sideways just before the expected collision; lies flat on its stomach, head thrown back and swinging from side to side, lips drawn back in a wombat ‘grin.’ If it is playing on or near a slope, it will sometimes run up the slope and roll down, tumbling over and over on its side.” Triggs, acknowledging the infectious quality of the marsupial’s exuberance, concludes by saying “I defy anyone to watch a wombat at play without laughing aloud.”
Some species—the primates, the marine mammals (especially dolphins, sea lions, and seals), the Mustelidae (which includes weasels, otters, and ferrets), and the dog and cat families—are more exuberantly playful than others. The sheer zippiness of the animals can be breathtaking. This is particularly true of weasels, which have been wonderfully described as “hair-trigger mousetraps with teeth.” One owner described his weasel’s pelting-about: “From whichever retreat hid him for the moment, a wedge-shaped head and wicked pair of eyes would appear. Then out he’d roll, turning cartwheel after cartwheel like an acrobat going round the circus ring. He moved so fast that it was impossible to distinguish where his head began and his tail finished. He was like a tiny inflated rubber tyre bowling round the room.”
Irrepressible playfulness has been observed in river otters as well. Gavin Maxwell, who wrote Ring of Bright Water and for whom one race of otters is named, described the zestfulness of the otters living with him in the Scottish highlands. The principal otter characteristic, he came to believe, was perpetual play. Otters, whom he depicted as “extremely bad at doing nothing,” were mesmerizing, if often exhausting companions. Maxwell recounted one otter playing for hours at a time with “what soon became an established selection of toys, ping-pong balls, marbles, india-rubber fruit, and a terrapin shell that I had brought back from his native marshes. The smaller among these objects he became adept at throwing right across the room with a flick of his head, and with a ping-pong ball he invented a game of his own which would keep him engrossed for up to half an hour at a time. An expanding suitcase that I had taken to Iraq had become damaged on the journey home, so that the lid, when closed, remained at a slope from one end to the other. Mij discovered that if he placed the ball on the high end it would run down the length of the suitcase unaided. He would dash round to the other end to ambush its arrival, hide from it, crouching, to spring up and take it by surprise as it reached the drop to the floor, grab it and trot off with it to the high end once more.” At other times, Maxwell wrote, the otter “would set out from the house carrying a ping-pong ball, purposeful and self engrossed, and he would still be at the waterfall with it an hour later, pulling it under water and letting it shoot up again, rearing up and pouncing on it, playing his own form of water polo, with a goal at which the human onlooker could but guess.”
Many physical aspects of play seem to create pleasure for its own sake, although this is necessarily a subjective call. Marc Bekoff, a biologist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, is one of the leaders of a group of animal behaviorists that is giving new credence to the surprisingly understudied field of animal emotions. Like an increasing number of scientists, Bekoff argues that to assume that only humans experience an emotion such as
joy is arbitrary; it makes no sense at all from an evolutionary point of view. Animals engaged in exuberant play seem a particularly striking example of this. Although it may appear subjective to label an animal’s experience as pleasurable or joyful, it is unscientific to assume out of hand that a pleasurable emotion does not exist, or to ignore it simply because it is difficult to measure. There are limits always on what we can know about ourselves, about others of our kind, and certainly about those of another species. (We will never know, for example, what a weasel thinks about. Annie Dillard has put this beautifully: “He won’t say. His journal is tracks in clay, a spray of feathers, mouse blood and bone: uncollected, unconnected, loose-leaf, and blown.” Each species keeps its own emotional and mental ways. We scarcely understand our own, much less those of other animals.) But the limits on our knowledge should not lead us to dismiss the existence in animals of intense and enjoyable emotions. Evolution would be odd indeed to endow only humans with zest and joy.
Animals seem to take particular pleasure, as we do, in movements that are enjoyable to the senses—great leaps, fast forward motions, floating or rocking movements—as well as in actions that are particularly energetic in their own right. Speed is intoxicating, and the quickened heartbeat and fast respiration of vigorous play are often highly enjoyable states. Katy Payne, the acoustic biologist who was the first to establish that elephants communicate through infrasound, gives a marvelous account of young elephants taking delight in the chase: “Young bulls love to chase things; they relish the exhilarated, chin-up, feet-splayed rush and the sight of other animals in flight, and they magnify the impact of their assaults by chasing in pairs or small gangs. Once I saw a rush of which the object was a butterfly. Eyes wide, a gang of young male elephants collectively weighing some twenty or maybe forty tons thundered to a stop as the small fairy, white and weightless, rose up out of their midst. Then each turned on his heels and fled.”
Gliding and coasting motions, which give rise to an often exhilarating sense of freedom, seem to delight both animals and man. Young sea lions will ride ocean waves again and again. Although this wave surfing may serve some adaptive function later in the animal’s life—adult sea lions will occasionally catch waves in order to make it to the high rocks during storms—it not uncommonly seems to be done simply for the joy of it. Harbor seals of all ages play exuberantly: they pirouette through the air in 360-degree spins; they “hovercraft” just over the surface of the water, splashing as they go; they “whoosh” along the surface on the incoming surf; and they “bubble chase,” pelting after their expelled air bubbles underwater and then following them along as they rise to the surface. Biologists studying harbor seals in Nova Scotia believe that ebullient play is pleasurable to the seals and intrinsically reinforcing.
Play is most common in fine weather, but snow also seems to bring out playfulness in many species. Sliding across the snow and ice is a rapid and efficient means of getting from place to place—river otters traveling over mountain passes or making their way down from mountain lakes often leave uninterrupted slide trails that are several hundred meters long—but many animals will repeatedly, and seemingly unnecessarily, slide down the ice or snow on their stomachs or, in the case of human children, on their sleds, and then gallop up to the top of the slide and plunge back down again. Tobogganing has been observed in the giant panda, as Schaller and his Chinese colleagues observed in Wolong: “One animal, probably a subadult, walked down a steep slope. Whenever it came to a forest opening where snow lay deeply, it slid downhill on chest and belly for 4 to 7 m[eters], leaving a deep furrow. There were at least 6 such sites; at one, the panda apparently walked back uphill to repeat the slide.” One of the pandas tobogganed when it was clear he could more safely have walked.
Bears of other species have also been observed sliding down snowbanks on their chests and stomachs, and have been seen making snowballs and playing with them. (Japanese macaque monkeys, too, have been sighted constructing and playing with large snowballs.) John Fentress, an adviser to the Wolf Release Project in Yellowstone National Park, relates the apparent joy of a young wolf’s first experience of snow as it ran through snowfields, “having fun.” Bernd Heinrich, in Mind of the Raven, describes ravens pushing themselves forward in the snow on their bellies and then rolling sideways down a bank of snow.
At some point, exuberant play veers upward into near dance. “Dancing” associated with mating behaviors is well known in many species, of course. But occasionally an animal engages in rhythmic, apparently joyous movements in a seemingly purposeless way. Katy Payne describes dancelike behaviors in mother elephants watching their young chase wildebeest and suggests that dance is one of many communal activities that brings elephant families closer to one another.
Ronald Rood, who raised an orphan baby porcupine on his property in Vermont, discovered that the young rodent was inordinately fond of solitary dancing on the porch. “He’d whirl in a circle, stiff-legged, with quills raised,” writes Rood, and then, “slashing his tail back and forth, he’d run forward a few steps, spin several times, and then run backward. Sometimes he’d grunt a challenge at an unseen foe. More often he’d dance in silence. Occasionally we’d turn on the porch light long after dark, and find our porcupine dancing in the center of the floor.”
Lest this be seen only as a sentimental interpretation of aberrant captive behavior, it should be noted that scientists in New York have documented a similar “exercise dance” in members of their porcupine colony. This dance, carried out with widely varying degrees of playfulness, depending upon the individual porcupine, was virtually indistinguishable from that shown by the hand-reared animal. The porcupines, in solitary play, would rock from side to side, “alternately raising and stamping with the hind feet, like a marcher marking time.” The movement of the hips and hind feet was accompanied by a swinging of the arms, which eventually became a “rhythmic swing.” The porcupines engaged in their “dances” on most days.
Not all animals play. With unusual exceptions, it is the more intricately brained animals, those with the longest and most parentally protected youth, that engage in sustained stretches of high-energy play. These animals, few or singly born, sheltered and fed by their parents for extended periods of time and shielded from predators and the extremes of weather, have the time and energy to engage in exuberant play and exploration. They are given safe harbor by their parents and a long tether on which they can canvass, delight, and learn. As they grow older, the survival requirements initially taken on by their parents become their own, and the food and reproductive obligations of their species take on increasing moment. Play declines necessarily and precipitously as youth gives way to full growth. Young weasels and stoats, for example, play outside their nests when they are approximately four to six weeks old. This time of intense play overlaps the period when they are still nursing and immediately precedes the acquisition of permanent teeth and subsequent killing of prey on their own. Most weasel families break up when the kits are three or four months old and able to hunt and survive independently. Play recedes to the background of the weasel’s life, replaced by tasks more immediately necessary for survival. But the early days of weasel play, like those of most young mammals, are full of energy and zip.
“The random high spirits of youth are as necessary and inevitable as the serious and restrained pertinacity of maturity,” maintained the zoologist Chalmers Mitchell in his 1911 Christmas lectures at the Royal Institution in London. But high-spiritedness, he observed, is not present in all young animals. “Caterpillars, young cockroaches or grasshoppers, lobsters or crabs or snails are not to be distinguished from their seniors by any excessive gaiety,” he noted dryly. “The exuberance of youth begins with the higher animals and increases as we ascend the scale of vertebrate life.” Chalmers, in an argument not unlike that put forward a decade earlier by Karl Groos, proposed that play was not simply the result of the excess energies available during a highly evolved and protected youth. Rather, he b
elieved, young mammals, unlike reptiles or insects, are fed and protected “in order that they may have surplus energy, and they require the surplus energy for the experimental business of their youth.… Limbs, claws, nose, teeth, tail, all their senses are exercised in every possible way, are applied in every possible direction, on everything that comes within their reach.”
Play certainly seems to facilitate an animal’s ability to move in a more deftly coordinated and responsive way. Chasing, tumbling, and scrambling about are a requisite part of strengthening muscles, honing eye-limb coordination, and laying down essential synaptic pathways in the brain. Limb and eye-limb movements are coordinated in the cerebellum, and the number of cerebellar synapses is significantly influenced by behavior. Not surprisingly, there is a relationship between play and synaptic growth. Young mice, for example, begin playing when they are about fifteen days old and play most vigorously between days nineteen and twenty-five, which is also the period of maximum synaptic formation.
Physical skills, such as those involved in hunting or defense, stem at least in part from the complex behaviors learned and practiced during play. Some of these survival benefits accrue early. Very young cheetah cubs, for instance, show a high rate of locomotor play, which researchers suspect helps the cubs in escaping from their predators. Most young mammals play with objects, an activity which, among other things, teaches them how to catch prey and how to explore their physical world. Many species—including our own, nonhuman primates, rats, and those in the mustelid family—show a preference for complex and novel play rather than simple object manipulation. George Schaller found that Serengeti lion cubs play with nearly everything that comes their way: pieces of bark, tufts of grass, elephant droppings, tortoises, and the twitching tassels on the ends of the tails of other lions.