Animal play

“ Recreation is as common among them as it is among our own children; and they seem always to be artistic and even skilled in their play. Young goats and lambs skip, jump, run races, throw flips in the air, and gambol; calves have interesting frolics; young colts and mules have biting and kicking games; bears wrestle and tumble; puppies delight in biting and tussling; while kittens chase everything from spools of thread to their own tails. [Pg 33]
But animal children grow up, and stop playing to a certain extent as age advances, precisely as human children do. ”

“ I thought him lost and rose to move on, when a purple shadowy landscape pushed up into the sky and in this strange, dim scene a giant shadowy grizzly raced and played.
Play is a common habit of animals. Darwin, Wallace, and others have emphasized its importance as a progressive evolutionary factor in the survival of the fittest. Play is rest and relaxation; it gives power and proficiency; it stimulates the brain to the highest pitch of keenness and arouses all the faculties to be eager and at their best; it develops the individual. ”

“ The beautiful animal, with open mouth, pricked up ear, and eyes sparkling with vivacity, now eagerly watches every motion of the ball, and of his play-mate, and now seeks for either or both, in their hiding-place. It would be difficult to determine from their actions, which exhibited the quickest perception, the most ingenuity, or the most ardent relish for the amusement. A similar playfulness is seen in most young animals. ”

“ And the tendency to play is so far organic, in that it is dependent on inherited instinctive propensities, and so far psychological in that it is accompanied by a felt want, which constitutes a conative impulse finding its appropriate end in the consciousness of satisfaction. But play—if we accept the term as the group-name for all these modes of behaviour which fall under our second class, those of indirect biological value—does not cease with the period of youth; it occupies all the intervals in the more serious business of animal life. ”

“ Many games, indeed, may even be regarded as direct manifestations of the sexual impulse, and I must therefore now return to the consideration of this topic; but I shall confine myself to certain phenomena observable in the animal world, since the games of animals are, in this connexion, so much simpler than those of children. Play constitutes a major part of the activities of young animals ”

“ Play, as a means of animal education, is varied, and has for its end all-round training of the animal mind in its sphere of operation. Although there are some specific propensities, certain observable trends of behaviour, as in hunting-play, courtship-play, and the like, we must not expect, nor do we find, anything like stereotyped definiteness of conative activity. We find that freedom and elasticity in animal education which is, perhaps, more often advocated than carried into practice in human education. ”

“ Small use to be a child unless one can play. Says Karl Groos: "Perhaps the very existence of youth is due in part to the necessity for play; the animal does not play because he is young, but he is young because he must play." Play is a constant factor in all grades of animal life. The swarming insects, the playful kitten, the frisking lambs, the racing colt, the darting swallows, the maddening aggregation of blackbirds—these are but illustrations of the common impulse of all the animal world to play. ”

“ And for human beings, whose work is so largely enforced, the freedom and evident joy of it all suggests the play which has acquired for us the meaning of relaxation from irksome effort, and glad abandonment to less constrained modes of behaviour. But in young animals such play is, after all, the serious business of their time of life. ”

“ It follows from their instinctive character that animal plays are peculiar to the species which perform them. We find series of sports peculiar to dogs, others to cats, and so on through all the species of the zoölogical garden, whether the creatures be wild or tame. ”

“ Many of these, perhaps the finest, gamest, and bravest, are shot over dogs, where the wonderful instinct of the animal aids the intelligence of the human; but whether followed by the faithful setter, or lured to bobbing decoy; killed from points where, prone in the reeds, the eager sportsman, insensible to cold or wet, at the grey of dawn or dusk of night, awaits his prey; or from the convenient blind which the deluded birds approach without suspicion, or pursued with horse and wagon on the open plain—these all are game birds, and he who follows them legitimately is a sportsman. ”

“ Small business indeed and often ludicrous, this playing at grasshopper hunting. So it seems to us; so also, perhaps, to the wise old mother, which knew all the ways of game, from crickets to caribou and from ground sparrows to wild geese. But play is the first great educator,—that is as true of animals as of men,—and to the cubs their rough helter-skelter after hoppers was as exciting as a stag hunt to the pack, as full of surprises as the wild chase through the soft snow after a litter of lynx kittens. ”

“ Let him represent the flying of birds and he enters partially into the life of birds. Let him imitate the rapid motion of fishes in the water and his sympathy with fishes is quickened. Let him reproduce the activities of farmer, miller and baker, and his eyes open to the meaning of their work. In one word let him reflect in his play the varied aspects of life and his thought will begin to grapple with their significance. ”

“ The other way was to make a nest of your hand, and ask, "Put your finger in the crow's nest, the crow's out." You were let to put it in a few times, and then the player suddenly sang out, "Oh, the crow's in," and stuck his thumb-nail into your finger. "She said and she said" was a general, not a love game, and before what she said a certain animal was mentioned, which was previously arranged, generally a cat or a dog. I remember a case when it was to be dog, and the "saying" was missed. ”

“ I’ve a good hunting dog, and as soon as we get things in shape we’ll see what we can do. What sort of game do you prefer?”
“Anything will suit me—elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses, and the like; or, if we can’t do better, I wouldn’t mind a bear or deer.” ”

“ Play constitutes a major part of the activities of young animals; think, for instance, of a kitten playing with a hanging tassel or with a ball, of puppies chasing one another, and of young birds playing with fluttering wings. ”

“ Their care is to catch the varying, elusive personalities which dwell back of the luminous brain windows of the dog, the horse, the deer, or wrap themselves in reserve behind the inscrutable eyes of all the cats, or sit aloof in the gaze of the hawk and the eagle. The animal story at its highest point of development is a psychological romance constructed on a framework of natural science. ”

“ There are few persons who do not like horses, dogs, cats, and other pets, and fewer still who can pass by the animal cages at the circus or the "zoo." Hunting, trapping, and fishing are vocations for some men, and sport for many more. ”

“ In daily life we have discovered many other valuable qualities in this animal; but its intelligence and sagacity are more especially shown in the chase. It discovers and traces out the tracks of the animal, leading by the leash the sportsman who accompanies it straight up to the prey; and as soon as it has perceived it, how silent it is, and how secret but significant is the indication which it gives, first by the tail and afterwards by the nose! ”

“ Several times in the course of a summer, when I wanted to observe the little duck family more nearly, or to learn the meaning of some queer play that I could not understand from a distance, I would creep out of the larches unseen, worming my way along a sunken deer-path, and stopping whenever heads were turned in my direction. One might think it an easy matter to approach any game by such methods ”

“ Bear, boring a hole in the wind, and behind him two boys, coming strong, but not in his class for speed. Our quarry gained one block in three. We just rounded a barn in time to see him jump into a wood shed behind a real estate office.
I knew a cat with kittens lived in that wood shed, and strained myself to reach there before the fun was over. However, there was ample time. The code of the animal duel is as formal and long-winded as anything the mind of man has devised. ”

“ Monkeys (like the squirrels of our northern forests) can be seen running up and down a tree and leaping from branch to branch, without any conceivable purpose but the enjoyment of the exercise itself; dogs run races, young lions wrestle and paw each other in a playful trial of prowess; even birds can be seen sporting in the air, and dolphins on the play-fields of the ocean. ”

“ Why, then, does he choose a moment when everybody is looking to run in wildly and disturb every bird in the field? Or why, when you have sent him in pursuit of a runner, does he lie down and pant, while the keeper's dog, a tangled door-mat of the poodle species, solidly, and without ostentation, tracks down the wounded bird, and finally deposits it at the keeper's feet, just as you are assuring everybody that there is not a vestige of scent, and that no dog could possibly be expected to work in such weather. ”

“ There is no evidence that young Darters play at catching twigs as preparation for their fishing, and until there is evidence of this it is simpler to think that the play habit here, instead of being rooted by the utilitarian dictates of natural selection in the behaviour of the species, as with kids or kittens, is a secondary outcome of leisure and restlessness combining to operate with natural aptitude—in other words, true sport, of however simple a kind.
The commonest form of play in birds is flying play. ”

“ If the game be up once, and the hounds in chase, you shall see how he will prick up his ears straight, and tickle at the sport as much as his rider shall, and laugh so loud, that if there be many of them, they will even drown the rural harmony of the dogs. When he travels, of all inns he loves best the sign of the silver bell, because likely there he fares best, especially if he come the first and get the prize. ”

“ They represent, in fact, true play or sport among ourselves; and seem better developed among birds than among mammals, or at least than among mammals below the monkey. True that the cat plays with the mouse, and many young mammals, like kittens, lambs, and kids, are full of play; but the playing with the mouse is more like the singing of birds outside the mating season, a transference of a normal activity to the plane of play ”

“ Even better than all these wonderful gifts, to see and taste and smell, and the strange pets, such as peacocks, and rabbits, and song birds, with occasionally a tiger, or lion’s cub, in a cage, and the circus shows and chariot races, which delighted young and old, there came a new kind of people in the land. ”

“ Three men, of the roughest order, were dancing distractedly around, trying to beat off a swarm of bees that surrounded them, and yelling like mad, while a big collie dog, wild with excitement, barked with all his might. ”

“ But the playing period is much more; it is one of the few opportunities animals have of making experiments without too serious responsibilities. Play is Nature's device for allowing elbow-room for new departures (behaviour-variations) which may form part of the raw materials of progress. Play, we repeat, gives us a glimpse of the possibilities of the mammal mind.
Other Glimpses of Intelligence
A squirrel is just as clever as it needs to be and no more; and of some vanishing mammals, like the beaver, not even this can be said. Humdrum non-plastic efficiency is apt to mean stagnation. ”

“ Johnson also claims in this article that play is a preparation for future serious occupations, and cites the play of kittens or young dogs as an example. But observation seems to teach us that in many cases the play activity seems to be a rehearsal of race instinct, as in the hunting and fighting games of boys. ”

“ A large dog who saw him dashed into the river, soon reached the poor spaniel, seized him by the neck, and brought him safe to shore, amidst the shouts and praises of the spectators.
Animals, when treated kindly, attach themselves to human beings. Birds build their nests near the habitations of men. In the wild, distant woods all is still. One hears no song of birds. ”

“ The play of all young animals is either an imitation or reflection of the search for food—the hunting instinct—or the love-making and sexual quarrels pertaining to reproduction, the pretended competition by the young for the favours of the opposite sex. ”

“ And so with the kitten running after a cotton ball, making it roll and again catching it, crouching as though in ambush and then leaping on it, we see that the whole sport is a dramatizing of the pursuit of prey—an ideal satisfaction for the destructive instincts in the absence of real satisfaction for them. ”

“ The players gather around a table or sit in a circle, each one being given the name of an animal; the sport of the game will consist largely in choosing unusual or difficult names, such as yak, gnu, camelopard, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, Brazilian ant-eater, kangaroo, etc. ”