Kingdom of Play

the study of animal play has been fragmented and rather scattershot there have been only five books on this that devoted to the subject exclusively since the first book which was written in 18 1896 um the uh the reason for this neglect if if I may is uh perhaps twofold one is that play is difficult to identify it's hard to be certain I think that an animal is playing another is that that play is perhaps hard to Define [Music] greetings I'm Ivon staff for science for the public and I welcome you to our contemporary science issues and Innovations program while human play is widely recognized as important for development for Animals the role of play is not so certain today we learn why scientific interest in animal play is increasing and just how extensive and creative this kind to play is our guest is David Tumi professor of English at the University of Massachusetts ammer and also co-director of that English Department's professional writing and Technical Communications program Dr Tumi is the author of this wonderful book Kingdom of play uh what ball bouncing octopuses belly flopping monkeys and muds sliding elephants reveal about life itself and uh let's see and this describes the imaginative play of many creatures and considers the purpose of this behavior in addition to his extensive scholarly work Dr Tumi has written for the general public a number of awardwinning books on multiple topics and Kingdom of play looks like another award Dr chumi welcome thank you so much for joining us today thank you ion my pleasure um so I'm uh I would just want to introduce the uh topic a bit and give some background and uh generally um generally look through the book briefly um so play is a subject I think is intrinsically interesting to most people and I think many of us have have looked at animals playing dogs maybe Birds certainly cats and wondered exactly how they're playing why they're playing and um things we we we've wondered about the behavior generally and we've wondered about it specifically I think it comes as a surprise to many or would come as a surprise to many it did come as a surprise to me to learn that the study of animal play has been fragmented and rather scattershot there have been only five books on this that devoted to the subject exclusively since the first book which was written in 18 1896 um the uh the reason for this neglect if if I may is uh perhaps twofold one is that play is difficult to identify it's hard to be C certain I think that an animal is playing another is that that play is perhaps hard to Define it's been hard to Define perhaps in humans and so the subject it's not to say that the subject hasn't received attention from from scientists from animal behaviorists and ethologists it has but it's been uh if if one looks at the research the the the research in print for instance you'll find there's no Journal of animal play there's no Institute of animal play there is no Department of animal play in any college or university and the papers published on animal play are very specific it might be mating behavior versus play in red squirrels for instance um so why so so the problem um scientists have here is knowing that a certain behavior is play and not something else maybe it's is it is it fighting is it mating behavior is it exploration uh so the uh a number of scientists have worked to come up with definitions and one of them who may have thought most about this issue this problem of defining play is Gordon Burkhart uh Gordon Burkhart has has identified five features of play that he says or he claims and uh and he claims with with some justification I think that that um these characteristics uh do Define play so one is that play in no way assists an animal in its survival or its reproduction it has no obvious immediate function unlike say um hunting or for in another is that another feature of play says burkart is that it is voluntary that is an animal plays of its own free will an animal cannot be forced to play uh and forced play one might say as an octy the third one is that the movements of an animal playing are repeated but they are also varied now uh I think we've seen animals that are unhealthy or perhaps caged uh repeating their movements a a wolf in a cage may walk back and forth and back Pace back and forth and back and forth all day that is not uh a healthy wolf I think we would agree uh an animal an animal that's playing will vary its movement say a pony fcking in a field the uh it'll throw its head back it will it will jump on it uh it raise its for legs uh and and jump and throw its head back in a slightly different direction so the movements are repeated in a way but they're they're also varied uh the last characteristic of an animal playing or how you know an animal is playing it plays only when it is well fed and safe and rested uh an animal does not play when is tired or endangered or hungry or will play less we should say so these are um these are bir carts definitions of animal play and they've been very helpful for for scientists who are working to identify animal and play in the 100 or so years since this study been studyed since scientists ethologists animal behaviors been studying animal play there are two theories explaining its adaptive Advantage many people would say why does play need an Adaptive Advantage why why do we have to even think about natural selection and evolution in terms of in as it relates to play isn't it just enough that it's fun isn't that isn't that sufficient isn't that enough reason for animals to play well an evolutionary biologist would say no not really and the reason would be that play takes time and energy that an animal might spend or find more useful to spend in other Pursuits eating mating foraging Etc uh play can also be dangerous so these are one would say um disadvantages of play and uh an evolutionary biologist would say these disadvantages are so serious that play because it exists must have advantages that outweigh those disadvantages so what are they there have been two hypotheses that most evolutionary biologist have um say believe now must have some role in play one is that it is training for adult behavior and I think this is the uh common view of what play is for uh a cat say toying with a mouse or m a mouse toy is training for hunting that's one uh another reason for an Adaptive advantage of play is that it's socialization which is to say uh wolf Cubs play together and they must learn together because as adults they have to learn to hunt together a wolf a a lone wolf cannot um cannot successfully take down an elk one has that lone wolf that wolf has to do with a pack so play is necessary to the survival of an individual wolf it's also necessary to the survival of the pack so those two adaptive advantages that is training for adult behavior and socialization both seem to explain the Adaptive advantage of play or be adaptive advantages play but they don't explain everything um and uh that's where things get really interesting a lot of animals uh play it seems for other reasons and one of them um a group of scientists a group of comes a group of scientists came upon this idea from observing piglets um the Edinburgh Pig park was an um an open air say an open air laboratory it was it's a it was a hillside of woods and Fields and streams outside Edinburgh in the 1980s and there were uh domestic animals there allowed to R free and there were pigs there and piglets and the piglets are often scampered about and ran and that's not hard to explain as an Adaptive Advantage you run to escape a predator good but strange to say sometimes the piglets would stop running and Tumble forward they would deliberately fall down and do some results the observers the scientists had a difficulty understanding what this was for unless you want to make yourself the Predator's dinner it did not seem to be a prudent behavior on some consideration they they realized that in in the wild in nature piglets don't Scamper over even ground they scan over uneven ground and there may be roots and stones and other inanimate objects so the piglets weren't weren't in tumbling and Sumer assulting learning how to escape Predator they were learning how to recover from a fall in other words they were deliberately making themselves fall so they might learn to recover and this idea which they came to call training for the unexpected uh was put forth they put forth as a viable um adaptive advantage of play and that seems to be what a lot of play is I think many of us have seen um dogs for instance I knew a dog that would uh that would lie on his side and push a rag doll across the floor and push his face right against the floor uh and um get the rag all halfway across the floor then get up and run around and then go back and push the the dog the rest of the way it was um very inefficient way to get the rat off across the door across the floor but it was a very efficient way to train for the unexpected the dog was putting itself in an unusual position uh what I say a disadvantageous position so it could have a kind of a new experience so this um this idea this training for the unexpected seems to explain a lot of play um and it it may explain play in humans too and we are after all animals uh a lot of play uh seems not just uh a nice thing to have it seems absolutely necessary uh there have been stud neurological studies at play uh many of them conducted by Sergio and Vivian pelis at the University of Lethbridge in Canada and they have worked with laboratory rats now for decades and done they and their graduate students and their colleagues have done hundreds of experiments and uh one thing they know is I think a lot of a lot of these researchers who work with uh with Lab Rats now that uh a lab a rat denied play in its youth becomes asocial as an adult if it's denied play in its youth as an adult it becomes overly aggressive so aggressive that other rats don't want to play with it or becomes overly fearful and we just cow in the corner so play is necessary to um a healthy adult and that's pretty interesting and and one might say important and may bear on our own ideas of BL the um there are uh I think a lot of scientists interested in playing Gordon burkart Gordon burkart particularly have been surprised and interested in what animals play a lot of us I think most of us know that dogs play um and mammals play we've seen birds play but what birkart found was that reptiles play perhaps fish play um they're Ben studies and play in octopuses and they have been studies and play and this is this is a surprise to many people in bees um just last year um um a group of scientists uh were curious about be play and being um socialization and I think they all we all know I think that bees communicate uh they are astonished [Music] intelligent um and they they recall directions they give each other directions with the wagle dance they even seem to be able to count so this group of scientists conducted a fascinating experiment um there were um two Chambers uh one was empty another another adjoining chamber was filled with b-size wooden ball and the bees the bees were allowed to go in either of the chambers on the other side of the chambers on the other side of the bees was a food source and the bees could go through the empty one and get to the food source faster more efficiently or they could go through the chamber with the wooden balls in it and a lot of bees went through the chamber with the wooden balls and they didn't just go to the food either they stopped to play with the wooden balls some played quite a bit um and it should be said these bees hadn't eaten in a while so clearly the bees at least some of them preferred to play rather than eat so insects play um this came as a quite a surprise um the um uh so the boundaries of play where play the boundaries of play in terms of animals uh it's quite unclear um what animals play and what don't play um the quick answer is more animals play than a lot of people have thought play the um the book talks a bit about the the evolution of play and this is where things get speculative because um behaviors are pretty hard to trace um in terms of evolution but we can guess and uh play does seem to be very old perhaps even ancient and this is because we think this because it appears in so many Fon um it may be a case of what's called convergent evolution which it has such an Adaptive Advantage like say the eye um that it appears it appeared independently in many in more than one evolutionary line but um what what I found interesting in a in a book when I began to refresh myself on natural selection and Darwin's ideas of evolution uh the uh features that define evolution also are the features that Define play for instance evolution is purposeless it uh does not um an evolutionary line is not directed towards any particular end that is to say it is open-ended that is evolution doesn't stop it is provisional that is um it um every stage of evolution uh is impermanent and and and everchanging evolution as I think we know is is Wast is profit one thinks about Pawn or seeds or fish eggs um it brings order from disorder it holds competition and collaboration and balance a number of features that define evolution also Define play it also is purposeless and and it's open-ended uh a game is over say two dogs play fighting uh don't have don't have not agreed on when the play fighting would stop it just stops when they become too tired or just interested in something else uh it's also uh wasteful that is to I've already said its wastefulness uh is a reason it's evident waste fness uh is a reason ethologists became interested in its adaptive advantage to begin with uh it holds competition and cooperation in Balance which is to say dogs play fighting and and I think we've all seen dogs play fighting although some people may not some people may have mistake may mistake it for actual fighting it's not it's diff in obvious ways uh the dogs dogs play fighting have a kind of protocol that they agree upon that is to say one invites one dog invites another to fight when it bows its head if the play bow is is what that particular behavior is called and play fighting dogs can get a bit too frisky sometimes one might bite too hard if it does then it backs off immediately and performs a playb again which is to say to the other dog sorry my bad didn't mean to bite that part if the other dog accepts this apology it may perform its own playback and they continue to fight if all goes well so those two dogs are cooperating because they've agreed upon protocol but they're also competing there there is at least moments uh a winner and a loser the dog uh pouncing on the other at least for the moment is is uh is winning the play fight the dog on who is who roll over on back at least for the moment is um acknowledging a kind of play defeat for a minute so in these ways too uh play is like natural selection which is to say natural selection and play are both purposeless open-ended they're provisional wasteful they bring order from disorder they hold competition and collaboration and balance and because natural selection is the defining feature of living organisms which is to say living organisms um one might say there are other defining features that is they grow they consume they eventually die well those aren't really defining features those are not um there are those features might also describe a lot of other things like candle flames and stars even crystals reproduce so take all that out and you're left with what's the defining feature of a living organism it evolves so uh a living organism is defined by Evolution which is in as Darwin reminds us natural selection so if the features of natural selection are the features of Play It's No great stretch I think to say that life itself fundamentally is playful and that's I think I'll end there okay that's good it gives us a little time here for questions thank you for all that good background I have one thing to before we get to the list of questions and that is can you give us a few examples of some extraordinary play that you describe in your book I'm thinking of one is it the pro that has a jar lid and can zoom down a hill and the elephants uh there are number an octopus has a a very good one about octopus but they're quite amazing some of the most unusual ones sure um I think maybe the most spectacular kind of play is monu's harriers Monte's harriers uh drop catch that is one will carry a twig or a tuff of grass and F and fly ahead of another one and fly below it and behind it it will drop that trick or or or a tuft of grass that will catch it in midair um but yeah octopuses um uh play with objects and there is uh a rather famous YouTube video of a crow uh that is uh um snowboarding yes with a jarid um um evidently this is not an unusual behavior people who live in in snowy regions with ravens and crows around have have seen it uh quite a bit um yeah and and elephants uh Indonesian elephants have been seen muds sliding um and all all of these things you can find somewhere online yeah right uh well I ask that because I think most of us are aware of you know how cats and dogs and various animals that are familiar uh play but some of the types of play that you mention are just really imaginative and uh they're not necessarily linked to development of some Behavior but you think gosh it's a kind of evolution of intelligence and maybe imagination whatever that is useful for but it looks like great fun I will go to some of the other questions now it's not showing online oh yes uh one question here is um what does animal play tell us about sentients in and in animals are they conscious in the when we talk about sensient in in uh humans are they conscious in the same way um it's hard to know for sure but um certainly um they are it would seem that they're experiencing pleasure um and um it would it would also seem they they do have inner lives right uh here here here's another one uh the this uh viewer uh says that in watching squirrels chasing each other uh through the parks and up the trees and so on are they playing or is this an establishing territory or what both yeah yeah and and mating sometimes um yeah there there's a lot going on there uh and and squirrels present uh that squirrel behavior is particularly vexing to ethologists because it does seem to be all mixed up uh and that shouldn't surprise us our play human play is all mixed up too with with mating and fighting we do it all sometimes right here's another one uh what do you have to say about cross species play is a good question like dogs and cats and horses and dogs and cats they play across species yeah um that is a a new area of uh scientific inquiry and that is an example I I think that is evidence that that play is quite important that animals can play across species um there there's a a number of studies of horses and dogs playing and the horses and dogs will each of them will self handicap that is the dog won't bite as hard the horse might lower its head or roll over on its back so it can be more or less on the same level as the dog and yeah cross species players is is quite astonishing um and they uh how animals with totally different evolutionary backgrounds can agree on a protocol and can s- handicapped to recognize the disadvantage of the other and and accommodate it that that's amazing uh it's another thing is that um can you tell us what your best example was in all these cases that you looked at and across many many species many organisms what was your the thing that either most surprised you or is of most interest of an example of play that's a hard question to answer it depend yeah it it uh I mean that's almost like it's almost like ask me what's my favorite color I I don't I don't really have a favorite color they're all all right I I don't they all seem amazing their own ways well yeah some of them the uh some of the examples you bring up in the book like the crow that goes surf surfing or what not surfing uh but these kinds of activities uh are really striking and most of us don't see that all of the time so it's appreciated that you bring those up uh because it does broaden that topic of animals playing um uh here's another question did studying animal play change your way of looking and thinking of animals yes absolutely it's it's difficult to to see any animal and not wondering now uh what's going on and and you have more respect now right I I suppose so I I have more awareness of possibilities right right right understand and um the in terms of the in your book there's a relationship somebody that thought that made a relationship between play and dreaming do you want to mention that yeah sure um the theories that uh the old theories that play as train for um a behavior that is it's a kind of a simulation um something like that might occur in dreams too and we've I think we've all recognized that or had that um the dream you have of well the dream that my conscientious students have of being late for an exam is preparation and a kind of a warning that they should not be late for that exam uh we we a lot of us had dreams where we in either maybe terrifying situations or or perhaps just uncomfortable situations and uh they are they may be training for um uh um actual situations in in our life so dreaming may be playing without a body okay uh here's another one uh first uh is the play between humans and dogs and cats you know people play with their pets is that across species play yes is that an example okay yes okay and here's another do you think most animal species do most animal species have the ability to play I don't know if anyone knows that yeah now you um yeah I mean we don't we don't have a a complete census and I don't know if we ever will um but uh I I could say that of of the groups of animals that play mammals seem to do most of it most mams most mammals play and birds would uh Birds would uh U might come in second uh that raises another question I is there an alignment or correlation with the intelligence as you the the more intelligent a creature is and I say that because of the bees that you mention most people we don't think of bees playing or insects playing but you mention that these bees are very intelligent actually and they're very social and here they came up with a very interesting kind of play so is it intelligence does that tell you anything or predict play I would think intelligence or levels of intelligence um predict complex play that is the more intelligent um an animal the more complex it's is likely to be but how rudimentary and intelligence can be for an animal to still play I don't think anyone knows okay right because as you mentioned they're uh they're still studying the people are just beginning to really get into this um and um uh here's another question did studying animal play emphasize for you the importance of play and that is something uh that we need in our lives or presumably animals also yes um yes I mean a a lot of that is how the book concludes I think um and we uh we all could do with playing more absolutely uh which is an interesting thing among humans for sure but and uh you've pointed out that lab animals can very confined lab anal animals also suffer if they you know don't have that kind of Liberty here's another one is playing a form of problem solving it's if not a form of problem solving it's preparation for problem solving preparation for learning to problem solve and might be very important in that regard but for those I was thinking like the examples of the predator birds that you mentioned and so on that that that that does uh seem like uh the part of the play is preparation and uh development of those uh skills and yeah if to uh say say we um play is is more like uh if we put it in the realm of science it's closer to Pure science than applied science it's like scientists or Engineers working to solve the problem once they've that they stop uh so good that's has its advantages but uh scientists that are playing with a problem uh they may solve it but they continue to play and they may find another solution another way in because there's no U they they are they there's no clear end point so in that sense yes plays very good for problem Sol uh Dr Tumi you've written a lot of on a number of very different topics for the general public uh so this is my question how did you get into this one this is very curious have you had this interest for a long time or did just well a a friend of mine told me uh last week that we we've been child we were childhood friends and he said I was wondering about whether birds were in joying flying and I didn't remember saying that so but evidently it's been it's been my interest for a while but I I'm I got into this because I'd happened to read a paper that said that scientists had no AR overarching Theory explaining animal play and that was a surprise to me I thought it seemed like something that should have been answered a long time ago uh I did not realize it was an enduring mystery yeah and evidently it is it's really difficult to come at but it seems as though it's very clear that it is important whatever it is it's important in the much maybe the same way that for humans relaxation and joy and so on are important but they may lead to specific kinds of training or behavior or whatever before we end could you talk of about there were a couple of examples that about the octopus that I it's hard to explain perhaps but you did it very well in the book uh it can actually move an object from here to there using um uh how it blows the water out or the air through one of its little tube things sure um yeah um two um researchers Jennifer Ma and Roland Anderson were curious about octopus play they both studied octopuses and they were aware that octopuses were were quite intelligent as I think most of us we all are um uh so they they uh uh arranged an experiment that would demonstrate or perhaps test whether octopus is played and the octopuses uh were um uh in a tank put put in a tank with um [Music] uh floating objects they were as it were Tylenol bottles half filled with water so they would um float near the surface right on the surface and the octopuses uh using their excellent funnels that is the a funnel which they can jet water octopuses usually use this um to uh to clean um to clean the dens or to um push away something they don't like uh but they'd never been used to play but the octopuses started or some of them I should say started pushing the Tylenol bottles uh with the with the jet of water with the excellent funnel and there was uh the water in the tank was circulating they push it to into that uh that current of water that circulated around the tank waited for the Tylenol bottle to return then then pushed it again and one octop was done this upwards of 10 times um when they saw that uh they decided Well there's no obvious adaptive advantage to this the octopus clearly wasn't interested in the Tylenol bottles of food it knew it wasn't a predator uh it was it could only be they decided only be playing uh another thing another example that I thought was really very good was that I think it was a dolphin I'm not sure that re that had been in an aquarium but then it was returned to the Sea turned to the wild um but it in the aquarium setup it had been taught to stand on its tail is that correct or sort of walk on his tail and it went and taught the the wild dolphins to do that yeah that that is that is interesting yeah dolphins in aquarium shows uh are trained to tail walk off and you you can see them at the Boston Aquarium um but uh this particular dolphin uh Billy was rescued from the wild uh well was in a in a in a polluted stream and taken into the aquarium to to help it recover um and interestingly Billy wasn't trained to tail walk but she did see the others uh tail walking uh and some weeks later she was released into the wild and the same scienti observed her a little bit later in the wild tail walking on open ocean uh and moreover a little bit after that W uh um Billy the octopus's name I mean I'm sorry the porpus his name uh had taught another another porpus wave to tail walk to so both of them were tail walking so this this is play as culture this is U this an animal learning how to do something that one might say isn't wasn't isn't perhaps natural um transmitting this Behavior to to to a to a friend yeah there there there you have a number of examples like this that are ex really interesting but I think most of us are not familiar with them at all uh and it goes across these different uh creatures of but especially the ones that animals that are creatures that are known for intelligence have such an imaginative uh approach to play uh like kids almost okay uh do we have time for this one more um can we extrapolate that animals that coexist in swarms you know packs and uh mobs and things like that have higher levels of play but not necessarily greater intelligence so I guess that would be horses cows pigs uh I think I think we'd have to by higher levels of play do we mean complex play I guess so I don't know well I think we could uh I I think it's fair to say that animals that live in groups have more social play um there scientists who just study play who study play have roughly defined three categories one is solid play that play that pony fcking in the field one is object play the octopuses with the Tylenol bottles and the other is social play for instance uh dogs play fighting uh animals playing with each other so I think yeah animals and groups are naturally uh more likely to be good at Social play and their social play is likely to be pretty complex all uh the last one there they um uh somebody is asking you mentioned the play of bees that that one example this is has there and the person might have missed it has there been any study of ants and bees uh that or uh a study of other insects that are uh social I guess so far as I yeah there've been well uh insects playing so far as I know no um uh there are studies of ants being quite intelligent though of learning defitely yeah yeah um but um that the the group at um studying bees at Queensland University um uh in in England probably is conducting some kind of ongoing research about this I don't think that's going to be the last experiment right nobody would have expected that I'm sure well I think that's it Dr Tumi I appreciate so much your input here and for writing this book and once again can I show the the the book here it is uh and you definitely should run out and buy it the kingdom of play and uh you it it's very very readable very interesting book thank you again and best wishes thank you [Music] oh [Music]

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Length: 46min 16sec (2776 seconds)

Published: Fri May 10 2024