6 Four adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were taught to interact with peers by asking social questions or commenting about others during game play or group activities. Participants were shown a video model and then given an opportunity to perform the social behavior depicted in the model when playing a game with one another. All […]
9 
The possible role of play in creativity and innovation in animals is explored. After discussing issues involved in key terms and some prior studies on the creative process in humans, difficult issues in applying them to non-human animals are analyzed. If creativity in animals is only to be considered if it can definitely be linked […]
5 
Although play fighting has been studied for over a century in both human and non-human animals, quantitative data on marine mammals are still scarce. Here, we investigated play fighting in South American sea lions (Otaria flavescens), one of the most sexually dimorphic species with an extreme polygynous mating system, high levels of both intra- and […]
5 Octodon degus is a social caviomorph species that exhibits strong social bonds and robust distress responses to maternal separation. To understand the impact of early social isolation on social motivation, we investigated how social isolation during infancy, associated with repeated restricted interactions with mother and siblings, altered social motivation in young degus. In Experiment 1, […]
4 
An examination of the writings of 19th and early 20th century comparative psychologists indicates that they were well aware of many of the issues raised by the recent “cognitivism ” in psychology and ethology. George John Romanes and C. Lloyd Morgan are particularly underappreciated. A survey of current lay attitudes on mental continuity between humans […]
4 
Due to their playful propensity, dogs are a good model to test some hypotheses about play dynamics (length, asymmetry, features of players) and communication (play bow [PBOW]; relaxed open-mouth [ROM] display). We video-recorded 203 play sessions between dogs in an off-leash dog park in Palermo, Italy. Contrary to the expectation, play asymmetry (particularly high in […]
7 
Play and playfulness are enigmatic from an evolutionary perspective as it is not obvious that they provide any survival or reproductive benefits. Indeed, animals engaged in play can be injured or even killed, waste energy that could presumably be better put to other uses, or open themselves to predation through reduced vigilance. Play fighting can […]
9
Rough-and-tumble play, also called play fighting, is a form of play in which partners compete with one another to gain some advantage (e.g., strike, bite, push onto ground), but do so without the severity or consequences of serious fighting, which it resembles (Aldis, 1975). Play fighting is one of the most commonly reported forms of […]
2 
Using a data set of 69 different mammalian species, Heffner and Masterton propose that the longer and deeper the fibres of the corticospinal tract, the greater an animal’s digital dexterity. Because of the effects that phylogeny may have upon the extant phenotype of a given species, however, data from a wide range of species can […]
2 
The relationship between manus proportions and forepaw dexterity in 33 species of carnivores (Carnivora) was examined. Both the analysis of “raw ” data and independent contrasts revealed no significant correlation between the metacarpal-phalanx (MCP) ratio and forepaw dexterity. This result was corroborated by a common origins test, which indicated that changes in the MCP ratio […]
7 
Visual signals convey emotions and intentions between individuals. Darwin underlined that human facial expressions represent a shared heritage between our species and many other social mammals. Social play is a fertile field to examine the role and the potential communicative function of facial expressions. The relaxed open-mouth (or play face) is a context-specific playful expression, […]
2 
play fighting constituted most of the social play recorded in a captive group of oriental small?clawed otters, Amblonyx cinerea. Frame by frame inspection of cinÈ film was used for detailed analyses of these behaviours. Two aspects of the organization of play fighting were analysed. In the first, biting, it was found that in dyadic play […]
9 
Social play is a fundamental aspect of behavioral development in many species. Social play deprivation in rats alters dendritic morphology in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and we have shown that this brain region regulates responses to social defeat stress in Syrian hamsters. In this study, we tested whether play deprivation during the juvenile period […]
4 
In the highly social rat, male juvenile and adult subordinates initiate more playful contacts with dominant pairmates than vice versa. This study examined the effect of dominance on playful contacts in the relatively asocial golden hamster. Pairs of male hamsters were reared together from weaning, and their play was filmed in the juvenile (28?36 days) […]
4 
In canids, play dynamics seem to be more affected by dominance hierarchy rather than cooperative social bonds. To test this hypothesis we studied a colony of grey wolves (Canis lupus lupus). We quantified the dynamics of aggression and hierarchical changes in two periods (Sample 1 and Sample 2). Sample 2 was characterized by higher level […]
4
play fighting by juvenile montane and prairie voles involves attack and defense of the head, neck and shoulders. Since during play animals typically borrow behavior patterns from other functional contexts, two adult behavioral contexts were compared to juvenile play fighting. These were serious fighting and sexual encounters. During serious fighting in a resident?intruder paradigm, most […]
8 
In several rodent species social play appears to be necessary for proper deployment of species-specific patterns of aggressive and reproductive behavior. Specifically, in male Syrian hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus), play has been linked to the development of adult aggression. We quantified several types of social play behavior in same-sex peer groups of Syrian hamsters three times […]
10 
To the best of our knowledge, the basic biological values of all mammalian brains were built upon the same basic plan, laid out in consciousness-creating affective circuits that are concentrated in subcortical regions, far below the neocortical “thinking cap ” that is so highly developed in humans. Mental life would be impossible without this foundation. […]
4 
Restraint is thought to be essential to enable the reciprocity needed for play ï¬ghting to remain playful. Descriptions of playing in pigs suggest that they do not exhibit restraint. Analysis of videotaped sequences of play ï¬ghting in captive family groups of warty pigs was used to test three hypotheses about restraint and reciprocity. Hypothesis 1 […]
2 
First paragraph of this paper: play fighting by juvenile mammals generally involves behavioural components that can be predicted from the components involved in the fighting of adults (Meaney et al. 1985). For most species studied, this generalization is supported by findings that show the body targets attacked and defended during play fighting are the same […]
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