Even Turtles Need Recess: Many Animals -- Need a Little Play Time

[n2doc]

Fish, reptiles, and even some invertebrates appear to play. But when is it play, and not something else? And why do animals do it?

During a visit to the National Zoo in Washington, DC, biopsychologist Gordon Burghardt decided to peek in on a Nile soft-shelled turtle its keepers affectionately called “Pigface.” Pigface had been a zoo resident for more than 50 years, and Burghardt had seen him before, but this time, he noticed something a bit curious—Pigface was playing basketball.

“It was by itself,” recalls Burghardt, currently at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and “it had started to knock around” a basketball provided by its keepers. The year was 1994, and play had only rarely and anecdotally been reported in animals other than mammals, but he thought that might be what Pigface was doing. The 1-meter-long turtle exuberantly pushed the ball around its aquatic enclosure, swimming through the water with ease as it batted the ball in front of it with its nose. “If you saw a dog or an otter going around batting a ball, bouncing around and chasing it, and going back and forth and doing it over and over again, we’d have no problem calling it play,” he says. “And that’s what the turtle was doing.”
play

More recently, ethologist Jennifer Mather of the University of Lethbridge in Canada learned that two of her octopus research subjects had repeatedly blown jet streams of water at floating empty pill bottles, shooting them across the surface of their tanks at the Seattle Aquarium. “If you give an something new, it will grab it in its arms and bring it up to its mouth, probably exploring it chemically,” she says. This would usually happen a couple of times, she adds, until it “knew what it was, and didn’t bother anymore. But these two, it’s like they suddenly thought, ‘Maybe I can do something with this.’ ”

For Burghardt and Mather and most researchers who have witnessed such bizarre activities in reptiles, fish, and even invertebrates, it is clear that these animals engage in some form of play. But not everyone is convinced. “I personally doubt it,” says behavioral physiologist Bernd Heinrich of the University of Vermont. “I personally have never seen anything I’d call ‘play’ in turtles and wasps, both of which I’ve watched quite a bit. , I think you really have to be stretching the idea of play.”


Read more: Recess - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/2010/10/1/44/1/

[Blue Owl]

1. Mitch McConnell could use a recess...

a PERMANENT recess!

[MineralMan]

2. It wouldn't surprise me at all if all animals used play.

A number of years ago, I watched a butterfly tease one of my cats. It started when the cat jumped up at the butterfly, which quickly moved away from the cat. Then, over and over again, the butterfly would fly back down to a place where it was almost in reach of the cat. The cat would leap at it, and it would fly away a short distance. Then, it would fly back and repeat the tease. This happened at least 20 times while I watched. Finally, the cat got bored with the game and walked off. The butterfly then flew away from the area.

Now, maybe it was coincidence, but it sure seemed deliberate to me on the butterfly's part. The repetitive nature of the activity seemed to be intentional. I was fascinated by the incident, and thought about it for a long time before deciding that it probably was a real interaction between the two, with the butterfly playing a prank on the cat.

[GrannyK]

4. Have a look at this tortoius and great dane pup (video)

It sure looks like play to me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-3pvl5xSvE&feature=player_embedded

[MineralMan]

5. Very cute. I just shared that one on Facebook.

That tortoise was definitely playing with the dog.

[TheMadMonk]

3. And there are no homosexual animals.

And animals don't have a sense of humor.

Tell that to anyone who has ever had a run in with a sheoak tree full of black cockatoos.

Methinks Herr Heinrich is just one more sad git, determined that there is something specially special about humans that sets them apart from the rest of creation. Mostly, I think because while such distinction can't be ruled out, nor can a creator and a creation event that was put on just for mankind's special benefit.

Every "human behaviour" found in the animal kingdom is one less thing to make us special. Something, a lot of otherwise rational people have a hard time dealing with.