Lecture 3.docx

Lecture 3: Defining and Describing Play According to Burghardt, to Qualify as Play, the Behavior in Question has to be: Incompletely functional in the context expressed Voluntary or rewarding Modified developmentally or structurally compared to when it is used in its normal functional context Perfor...

Lecture 3: Defining and Describing Play According to Burghardt, to Qualify as Play, the Behavior in Question has to be: Incompletely functional in the context expressed Voluntary or rewarding Modified developmentally or structurally compared to when it is used in its normal functional context Performed repeatedly, but not necessarily in an invariant form Initiated by healthy, relatively unstressed animals in a relaxed content Advantages of the 5-Criteria Definition of Play Can distinguish play from other behaviors that share some of the criteria (e.g., cage stereotypies, exploration) Stereotypies – Repetitive movements or sounds Tiger pacing around cage Mouse engaged in truncated grooming Pigs chewing cage bars Exploratory Behavior The type of behavior in which the animal searches an object in its surrounding to satisfy its curiosity Usually investigative Appears to be increased by strangeness of the environment, and by its spaciousness and complexity Enables an animal to learn about its environment Can avoid anthropomorphic bias and recognize play in species that are not human like: Anthropomorphic bias: A tendency to ascribe humanlike characteristics, usually mental properties or agency, to things that do not have it. E.g., thinking a dog is smiling because its showing its teeth Play Fighting as an Example: Play fighting is a simulation of serious fighting in many species, where the players compete for access to the body areas bitten or struck during aggression. But let’s look at rats playing again. The competition is over contacting the nape of the neck which is nuzzled with the snout if contacted. During Serious Fighting, they direct bites to the lower flanks and dorsum Play Fighting can be Derived from Many Sources Competition can involve targets from aggression, sex, predation, grooming, etc., even within the same species So, it is not true that play fighting mimics serious fighting, it can mimic many different types of behavior, as long as there is a competitive component. What Make Play Fighting Different from the Behavior it Mimics? There is a cooperative component Competition coupled with cooperation leads to reciprocal encounters Combat Role Serious Fighting Play Fighting Attacker Simultaneous attack and defense (prevent retaliation) Sequential attack and defense (facilitate retaliation) Defender Vigorous defense (prevent all attacks) Ineffective defense (allow some attacks) Following Kick Serious Fighting (n = 90) Play Fighting (n = 70) Agonistic 98.8% 12.8% End Encounter 1.1% 57.2% Amicable 0% 30.0% An Extreme Example – Pigs The winner stops attacking when the loser crouches (submission signal), then after 2-3 seconds the loser stands up and in >30% of cases the loser attacks the winner (role reversal) What Make Play Fighting Different from the Behavior it Mimics? There is a cooperative component Competition coupled with cooperation leads to reciprocal encounters There are multiple ways to ensure reciprocity and how that is achieved can have implications for the socio-cognitive skills involved and the benefits to be gained. Combat practice (e.g., degus, pigs) Social Skills Enhancement (e.g., rats, monkeys) Descriptive Variation in Play For play fighting, the behavior that is mimicked varies across lineages of species as does the manner in which species ensure that such play is reciprocal (fair). Other forms of play are likely to have similar variation Object Play – Chimpanzees Juvenile male chimpanzees play with sticks as if they are weapons (mimicking aggression) Juvenile female chimpanzees cuddle and carry sticks as if they were infants (maternal behavior) Locomotor Play Mule deer – mimics anti-predator behavior Rat – mimics courtship behavior Tinbergen was Right We need to describe the behavior of interest before we can start answering the ‘why’ questions