David Toomey is the author of the new book Kingdom of Play: What Ball-Bouncing Octopuses, Belly-Flopping Monkeys, and Mud-Sliding Elephants Reveal About Life Itself. His other books include Weird Life. He is a Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Q: What inspired you to write Kingdom of Play?
A: I came across an article in a scientific journal that mentioned in passing that animal behaviorists had no overarching theory explaining why animals play - or more precisely, no single theory explaining the adaptive advantages of play.
Like many, I’d assumed those advantages were practice for some adult behavior or, in the case of social animals, socialization. But I found that the reality is far more complicated, and far more interesting.
The play of nonhuman animals seems to have many adaptive advantages, and they vary greatly from species to species and often from individual to individual.
Although scientists have made remarkable advances in hundreds of studies of play in mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and even insects, much about play—a subject I think intrinsically fascinating—still holds mysteries.
I was surprised to find that there was no book for lay audiences that treated animal play exclusively, and I thought the subject deserved one.
Q: The first chapter focuses on octopuses playing with a ball. Why did you decide to start here?
A: In order to study play, scientists first need to distinguish it from behavior that might look like play but is actually something else—say, exploration or investigation.
Researchers Jennifer Mather and Roland Anderson, in their tests of octopus play, brought the question to the fore and answered it quite convincingly.
They agreed upon criteria that met their definition of play, and found a behavior—that of two Pacific octopuses using their exhaling funnels to push a pill bottle around a tank again and again—that satisfied that criteria.
I wanted to define play at the outset so the book could move on to other matters. Mather and Anderson’s work revolved around the definition that many animal behaviorists use, and to which I return throughout the book.
Q: Scientific American said of the book, “Toomey makes a compelling case that not only does play offer advantages in natural selection and serve as a potential generator of animal evolution, but the innovation it sparks may even help primates like us influence our own evolution.” What do you think of that description?
A: I’m gratified that the Scientific American reviewer drew attention to the chapter that makes this point, as it’s important to our full understanding of the importance of play.
To explain, I’ll borrow an illustration from the book. Suppose in a population of rabbits, one begins to run in zigzags and so is better able to escape predators and survive long enough to reproduce. Other rabbits in the population mimic the behavior, and those able to run zig-zags are “selected” and also survive long enough to reproduce.
After several generations all the rabbits in the population are running zig-zags and the population has greatly increased in number.
Suppose the ability to run zig-zags was enabled by more complex neural networks. If it was, then natural selection “selected” rabbits with them, and thus is responsible for that increase in number.
But something else was going on, too. Consider that the first rabbit to run zig-zags made a choice (her own choice) to do so. Had that rabbit not made that choice, more complex neural networks might have offered no advantage, natural selection would not have selected for them, the rabbits’ population would not have increased, and might well have decreased.
Thus that first rabbit, by its innovation, was responsible for the increase in population, and in some measure actually directed its evolutionary line.
What has this to do with play? When animals hunt and forage, they do so in the same ways. They seldom innovate. But animals that play often play differently, and may introduce new moves, and even whole new games. They innovate.
An innovation—like running in zigzags—may allow an animal a small but real measure of control over its evolution. Innovations influence evolution, and play more than any other behavior invites innovation.
Q: Of the various animals you write about in the book, were there any that particularly intrigued you?
A: I think that all the animals I wrote about intrigued me equally, but perhaps for different reasons. Octopuses because animals so unlike us seem to play. Rats because their play is astonishingly complex and because some rats deliberately exploit the ambiguous place between play fighting and real fighting to their own advantage.
Gorilla mothers because they play “airplane” with their infants, lying on their backs and balancing the infant on an upraised foot. Young Montagu’s harriers because they play “drop-catch,” with one letting go a twig or tuft of grass and another flying below and behind, catching it mid-flight.
Turtles because I’d have thought them too sluggish to play. Bees because well - I would not have believed insects played had I not read the study showing bees rolling bee-sized wooden balls, evidently for the sheer pleasure of it. I should stop there.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’ve not settled on a particular project, but I am exploring various possibilities. I seem to be attracted to what I might call “science at the edges,” and the next project will likely be driven by that impulse.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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