Episode 429: David Toomey
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The Science Behind Animal Hijinks Understanding Play as Nature's Classroom
Through navigating the intricate world of play behavior we can dissect how animals, from rambunctious rat pups to the majestic meerkats, use this seemingly frivolous activity as a critical tool for survival. Explore the fine line between amusement and aggression, and discover how young creatures use play as a classroom for the lessons of life, playing a part in everything from social hierarchies to practicing recovery.
David Toomey is a Professor and Co-Director of the PWTC Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is also the author and co-author of several books, including Kingdom of Play: What Ball-bouncing Octopuses, Belly-flopping Monkeys, and Mud-sliding Elephants Reveal about Life Itself and The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics.
David and Greg discuss where humor meets hierarchy, where verbal jousts and jests reveal much about the social fabric of our own species and the animal kingdom – Play Behavior. David discusses the evolutionary parallels between the spontaneous nature of improv and the unpredictability of life itself, proving that being adept at handling the unexpected may well be hardwired in our DNA. Then they examine the broader implications of play throughout life, challenging the separation of creation and judgment and considering the profound implications of play for our sense of self and the wider world.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:
Why is play the defining characteristic of life?
33:49: Play and natural selection seem to have quite a lot in common. They are both provisional and they both balance competition and cooperation, and so on and so forth. All the many features of natural selection are also features of play. And you could push this, and I do push this a bit further, and say natural selection is the defining feature of life. You can say, well, life is something that grows, consumes, and dies, but the same can be said of stars or candle flames. You can say that life reproduces, but the same could be said of crystals. But the thing that characterizes life that does not characterize candle flames, stars, or crystals is that it evolved by natural selection. So, if natural selection and play share features, then I don't think it's going too far to say that life is fundamentally playful.
Exploration vs. play
04:32: One way to separate exploration from play is an animal exploring its environment or exploring something will conclude its exploration and decide that's all I'm going to do, that's all. Now I'm comfortable; I've sufficiently explored it, and we're done with that. But there's no clear endpoint to play. An animal stops playing only when it's tired of playing or becomes interested in something else. So all of that together may be sufficient to define play.
Natural selection is improv
21:48: Natural selection has many features, and one feature of natural selection, and Darwin noted this: it seldom works from scratch. It takes an existing feature and changes it—maybe improves it. So, for instance, the bones of a paw, if you will, if they are lengthened, and lightened, and hollowed, become the bones of a bird's wing, but the fundamental structure is the same; they're the same number, they are the same relation to each other, or they become the bones of a whale's fin, same thing, same number, same relation between them. So, natural selection doesn't invent things from scratch very often. It just changes things, and that's exactly what improv does. We all know the rule of improv is yes and. And that is, it seems to me, its natural selection is also yes and.
On the evolutionary purposes of play
06:59: This is what anyone would answer you if you asked the question right on this play. One is that it's training for adult behavior. That is, we're learning how to explore, hunt, or mate in our play. The other is that it's socialization. That is, for social animals, and consider wolf cubs. Wolves need to play together if they are to learn to cooperate, and they need to cooperate if they are to take down an animal larger than themselves, like an elk. A wolf can't do it alone. Thus, play is necessary for the survival of the individual animal. It's also essential for the survival of the pack itself. So those are the two long-standing hypotheses.