Play Behaviors-non-Mammals

Author(s): Pellis, S.M.
NIFP Rating: 6

play fighting appears to involve the behavior patterns of attack and defense otherwise seen in serious fighting. The degree of similarity, however, depends on the body targets attacked and defended during these forms of fighting. For many taxa, including diverse mammalian families and some birds, the same targets are attacked and defended during both play […]

Author(s): J.S. Doody, G.M. Burghardt, V. Dinets
NIFP Rating: 5

Although social behavior in vertebrates spans a continuum from solitary to highly social, taxa are often dichotomized as either ‘social’ or ‘non-social’. We argue that this social dichotomy is overly simplistic, neglects the diversity of vertebrate social systems, impedes our understanding of the evolution of social behavior, and perpetuates the erroneous belief that one group-the […]

Author(s): G.M. Burghardt
NIFP Rating: 10

My initial response to the question posed to me is that the state of play, as a scientific field, is actually pretty healthy. By this I mean that psychologists, biologists, ethologists, neuros-cientists, educators, sociologists, and others are realizing that play is an important, if not critical, aspect of life and an exciting and diverse research field. The increased […]

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