I think we can find play behavior in cephalopods, the giant squid, octopus, maybe the cuttle fish.

I have seen behavior in birds that looks play like. The turkey vulture flock likes to showoff in the late afternoon with fancy patterned flight---its not food seaking, just looks like they do it for fun.

For sure seems concentrated in mammalian behavior, But its not clear that we would know it if we saw it in an insect or invertebrate, or for that matter a reptile or amphibian.

Can anyone add non-mammal examples?

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000

Answers

Butterflies?

(Makes me want to play just watching them).

;-D

Diane

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000

I'm wondering if there is play between two (or more) parties, and play as in the joyful exercise of abilities.

It strikes me that Diane's example of butterflies is the latter, whereas puppies or kittens play wrestling is an example of the former.

The reason I see making a difference, is in the multi-party play context you need to make sure that the other party knows it is play and not the "real" thing, so you need a sort of meta-signalling system.

Solitary play wouldn't require this type of coordination.

Both would be fun.

Ants do a lot of coordination - never seen them do anything that would strike me as play though...

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000

What is play?

Isn't it subjective? Can we always tell when humans are playing?

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2000

Play between two entities is coordination of behaviour in an "as-if" mode where the cue does not carry its non-play meaning.

A snarl is a play-snarl. A teeth baring is a play-grimace. Puppies and kittens go at it, but when damage occurs there's a yelp or a meorrwwlll and the play frame ceases. (As I say to my 4 year old, "When the hurting begins the fun is over.")

Lots of human communication nuance depends upon ambiguity of meaning, so I'd say that quite often people cannot tell when other people are playing. A languaging example would be irony. Many people cannot distinguish irony from sarcasm, cynicism, or "bad attitude".

An NLP example I can remember was a story about talking in "quotes". One maneuver in therapy that can be useful is if you want to share information with a client, yet not do so directly (typically because the client has indicated that direct information will be dealt with as not respecting their needs). So, you ascertain what you'd like to tell them, then place a frame around it where someone else is telling the story to you. Alternatively, it is useful when you want to cuss your boss out to his/her face, as in "You wouldn't believe what just happened to me! In the parking lot this person came right up to me, stared me in the face and said "F--k off you SOB. Your kind really makes me puke." Would you believe it?"

So in the seminar, the seminar leader was standing at the front, explaining this and then says "Let me give you an example..." And went on to tell a story about a seminar leader who stood in front of the participants and called them all turkeys. As in, "I mean, this guy stood right in front of these people who'd all paid $500 to attend and said "You're a bunch of turkeys."" Well, in the seminar where this example was being given, a portion of the participants started to grin broadly, and some even laughed. The remainder didn't understand why.

So - I'd say play was going on, in the sense of being proferred by the seminar leader, and some in the audience were able to participate and play - and others were unaware of the "game" being proposed.

Dangerously close to the edge of mockery for my taste as I'm not a good judge of the nuances of these things while they're happening in real time. But some therapy leaders use this sort of play tactic as a sort as to who is operating multi-level while participating, and who is stranded at a single logical level.

Cheers,

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2000

Hello again - I've just thought of a third "category" of play.

There is a notion of something called "high-play". I believe George Leonard talks about it in some of his Aikido books, as do certain rock climbers.

As near as I can make out it is "play" because it is an end in itself (not a means to making money, achieving accolades, etc) and "high" because it demands the utmost in state control and commitment from the player, with failure usually meaning life-threatening injury or death.

One example is rock climbing free (without protection) on very exposed pitches.

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2000

Hi james,

Good points tom but I'd call the killing yourself for fun highly stupid play.

We have probably grossly misjudged the intelegence and communication/ language capacity of the cephalapods. Remember a Clarke story, maybe in Deep Range about the guy in the sub watching the giant squid flash signals in the dark and realizing just before he was crushed that they were showing pictograms of themselves as small compared to what was coming.

We always point out the similarity between an octopus eye and our own, we seldom note that the brain in a giant octopus or squid will be bigger than a basketball. Wonder what the brain size/ body mass ratio looks like?

They been here a long long time. Their ability to see and their ability to change pigmentation patterns looks to me like a vision based language.

I cannot see play behavior in insects, I doubt that that is a drive in butterflies. Maybe in drone bees? As jim said, hard to tell. What does a playful turtle look like?

So, how about stories of non-human, better still non-mammalian play.

-- Anonymous, April 14, 2000