Far out at sea, a tuna fleet surrounded a group of spinner dolphins swimming over a school of tuna, catching them in a gigantic net. Small, powerful speedboats circled the animals, creating a wall of sound that disoriented and terrified the dolphins, who sank down silently into the net, only the movement of their eyes showing signs of life. Biologists trying to learn how to save dolphins looked on in despair. But when a dolphin crossed the corkline at the edge of the net, “It knew it was free. It burst forward, propelled by powerful wide-amplitude tail strokes . . . [it] then dove, swimming at full speed . . . down and away into the dark water, only to burst from the surface in a high bounding series of leaps.”
In an account of this episode, dolphin biologist Kenneth Norris focused on the state of the trapped dolphins, persuasively arguing that their behavior demonstrated not apathy but deep fear. Equally compelling is the joy of the freed dolphins, springing through air and water.
Theorists of human joy have sought to categorize it and to analyze its causes in terms that range from a “sharp reduction in the gradient of neural stimulation” to “what obtains after some creative or socially beneficial act that was not done for the express purpose of obtaining joy or doing good.” Such theorists tend to ignore the possibility that animals, too, feel joyous.
No one who has ever had a dog or cat can doubt the animal capacity for happiness. Beholding and sharing their open joy is one of the great pleasures people take in animals. We see them leap or run, hear them bark or chirrup, and put words to their delight: “You’re home!” “You’re going to feed me!” “We’re going for a walk!” Like uninhibited human happiness, the pleasure is contagious, so that pets serve as a conduit to joyful feelings. It is rare to find a person as openly ecstatic as a cat about to be fed, or a dog about to go for a walk. If such joy were a figment of anthropomorphic projection, it would be a remarkable collective delusion.
Happiness can be a reward, a response of pleasure in accomplishment. If an animal feels good from doing things that have selective value, certainly that happiness can be said to have selective value. But that does not necessarily mean that the happiness exists only because it has selective value. The grim tasks of survival, even surviving well, do not make a lot of people happy. Part of happiness is often its lack of relation, or even its perverse relation, to any rational end, its utter functionlessness. The evidence is good that animals as well as people do feel such pure joy.
One of the many signs by which joy in animals can be recognized is vocalization. Pet cats are admired for purring, a sound that usually indicates contentment, though it may also be used to appease another animal. Big cats purr too. Cheetahs purr loudly when they lick each other, and cubs purr when they rest with their mother. Lions purr, though not as often as house cats, and only while exhaling. Both young and adult lions also have a soft hum they utter in similar circumstances—when playing gently, rubbing their cheeks together, licking each other, or resting.
Happy gorillas are said to sing. Biologist Ian Redmond reports that they make a sound—something between a dog whining and a human singing—when they are especially happy. On a rare sunny day, when the foraging is particularly good, the family group will eat, “sing” and put their arms around each other. Howling wolves may be asserting territorial rights or cementing social bonds, but observers say it also appears to make them happy.
Black bear cubs express their emotions more clearly than adults, says wildlife biologist Lynn Rogers. “When a cub is very comfortable, particularly when it’s nursing, they give what I call a comfort sound. I used to call it a nursing vocalization until I saw cubs doing it when they were not nursing.” He imitates the sound, a low squeal. “A pleasing little sound that they make. One time I gave a big bear a piece of warm fat. It just really seemed to like it. In fact, it made that same sound in a deeper voice. So I don’t know—is that happiness or not? Is it just comfort? It was pleased, anyway.”
Joy can also be expressed silently. Observers of almost any species will quickly learn to know the body language of a happy animal. Darwin cited the frisking of a horse turned out to pasture and the grins of orangutans and monkeys being caressed. In a personal letter he also gave a charming account of animal joy:
Two days since, when it was very warm, I rode to the Zoological Society, & by the greatest piece of good fortune it was the first time this year, that the Rhinoceros was turned out.—Such a sight has seldom been seen, as to behold the rhinoceros kicking & rearing, (though neither end reached any great height) out of joy.—The elephant was in the adjoining yard & was greatly amazed at seeing the rhinoceros so frisky: He came close to the palings & after looking very intently, set off trotting himself, with his tail sticking out at one end & his trunk at the other,—squeeling and braying like half a dozen broken trumpets.
Signs of happiness can no doubt be misinterpreted. One of the many factors contributing to the fascination with bottle-nosed dolphins is their permanent “smile,” created by the shape of their jaws rather than by an emotional state. Since a dolphin doesn’t have a mobile face, it “smiles” even if furious or despondent.
Despite this, biologist Kenneth Norris believes that people and dolphins can recognize the emotional freight of many of each other’s signals. That is, the two species can recognize or learn to recognize friendliness, hostility, or fear across species, even if we do not understand each other’s vocalizations. He cites a spinner dolphin’s “peremptory” barks, which indicate boisterous behavior, as compared with soft chuckles that indicate friendly contact, often between female and male. The body language of human and dolphin mothers with their babies, Norris says, is not only comparable, but easily understood by both species.
When the ice finally melted from one New England beaver pond in spring, a male beaver and his yearling daughter swam over to look at their dam, “porpoising” on the way, swimming over one another’s backs. Afterward they swam across the pond together, rolling, diving, popping up again and turning somersaults, in a display of delight with which even a nonswimmer could identify.
In an example of more literal language, several apes have been taught the sign for “happy.” Nim Chimpsky used the word when he was excited, as when he was being tickled. Koko, asked what gorillas say when they’re happy, signed “gorilla hug.” Whether Nim and Koko would understand one another’s use of “happy” is unknown. One criticism of ape-language teaching has been that the animals, with the exception of the gorilla Koko, were usually not taught words to express emotion, though it seemed likely that they would want to communicate emotive states to their friends and enemies. Carolyn Ristau suggested: “It could be worthwhile to attempt teaching a chimpanzee to associate signs with such mental states as aggressive, frightened, in pain, hungry, thirsty or wanting to play.” These might be the words that would interest them deeply.
One rainy day in Washington the signing chimpanzees Moja and Tatu were offered a chance to go outside into an exercise area. Moja, who hates rain, went out but scurried into a cave. Tatu climbed to the top of a play structure and sat in the rain, signing “out out out out out out.” A researcher said, “It looked like she was singing in the rain.”
An equally expressive behavior called “war dancing” is seen in mountain goats and chamois. One animal starts rearing, leaping, tossing its horns, and whirling about. One after another, the whole band takes it up. Goats war dance most often in the summer, when food is plentiful. The sight of a slanting snow bank can start a war dance and send the band bucking, twirling, and sliding downhill, kicking up the snow. They expend so much energy in their dance that some goats have been seen to make almost two full turns in the air in one jump.
What have these goats got to be happy about? They have not heard news of an inheritance, received a job offer, or seen their names in the newspaper. They have nothing to be pleased about except life, sunshine, and being well fed. They jump for joy.
Sometimes the source of the joy is obvious and recognizable, such as the excitement displayed by a group of wild chimpanzees finding a large pile of food. “Three or four adults may pat each other, embrace, hold hands, press their mouths against one another, and utter loud screams for several minutes before calming down sufficiently to start feeding,” Goodall and Hamburg reported. The implications seemed obvious. “This kind of behavior,” they wrote, “is similar to that shown by a human child, who, when told of a special treat, may fling his arms ecstatically around the bearer of the good news and squeal with delight.”
A principal source of joy for social animals is the presence of their family and the members of their group. Nim Chimpsky was raised in a human family for the first year and a half of his life. When he was about four years old, a reunion was arranged with the family that had raised him. When he spotted them, in a place where he had never seen them before, Nim smiled hugely, shrieked, and pounded the ground for three minutes, gazing back and forth at the different members of the family. Finally he calmed down enough to go and hug his foster mother, still smiling, and shrieking intermittently. He spent more than an hour hugging his family, grooming them and playing with them before they left. This was the only occasion on which Nim was seen to smile for more than a few minutes.
Reunions after separation are a common source of joy. Two male bottle-nosed dolphins at an oceanarium did not have the adversarial relationship seen between many male dolphins confined together. One was removed to another exhibit for three weeks. When he was returned, the two seemed very excited. For hours they hurtled around the tank side by side, occasionally leaping out of the water. For several days they spent all their time together, ignoring the other dolphin in the tank.
The meeting of two related groups of elephants seems to be a very emotional time, full of ecstasy and drama. Cynthia Moss has reported the meeting of two such groups, one led by the old female Teresia, the other led by Slit Ear. From a quarter of a mile away they began calling to each other. (Since elephants can communicate over long distances with sounds too low for us to hear, they might have been aware of each other before they started calling audibly.) Teresia changed direction and began walking fast. Their heads and ears were up, and fluid poured from the temporal glands (small glands between the eye and ear) of all the elephants in the herd. They stopped, called, got a response, changed course slightly, and sped ahead. Slit Ear’s group appeared out of some trees, running toward them.
The groups ran toward each other, screaming and trumpeting. Teresia and Slit Ear rushed together, clicked tusks and twined trunks together while rumbling and flapping their ears. All the elephants performed similar greetings, spinning around, leaning on each other, rubbing each other, clasping trunks and trumpeting, rumbling and screaming. So much fluid streamed from their temporal glands that it ran down their chins. Moss writes: “I have no doubt even in my most scientifically rigorous moments that the elephants are experiencing joy when they find each other again. It may not be similar to human joy or even comparable, but it is elephantine joy and it plays a very important part in their whole social system.” Elephantine joy can only be recognized as joy because it resembles human joy. Yet Moss is right in saying that we should not assume it is identical joy. After all, we have no idea how one feels when one’s temporal glands are streaming fluid. There may be forms of joy in elephant society different from any joy that humans experience.
Biologist Lars Wilsson observed that Tuff, a beaver, looked grim when watching over her baby as it swam, and deeply unhappy if a stranger came near it, but when she was nursing it or grooming it “radiated pure maternal happiness.”
A principal source of delight for many animals is their young. Certain features signal “baby animal,” such as big eyes, uncertain gait, big feet, and large head. Humans respond warmly to these traits not only in baby humans but in baby animals, as well as in some adult animals. Some animals react to youthful traits with affection, others with lack of aggression or with protectiveness. Such recognition of baby features is considered to be largely innate; animals may at times feel what people feel when they say a baby is adorable. The presence of such traits in baby dinosaurs has caused paleontologist John Horner to aver that some dinosaurs must have found their babies “cute.”
Tenderness may also cross the species barrier, with some animals showing distinct pleasure in caretaking. When a young sparrow crash-landed in the chimpanzee cage at the Basel Zoo, one of the apes instantly snatched it in her hand. Expecting to see the bird gobbled up, the keeper was astonished to see the chimpanzee cradle the terrified fledgling tenderly in a cupped palm, gazing at it with what seemed like delight. The other chimpanzees gathered and the bird was delicately passed from hand to hand. The last to receive the bird took it to the bars and handed it to the astounded keeper.
Another source of human happiness is pride, the feeling that we have done something well. It is unclear to what extent this can be called a self-conscious emotion and to what extent it corresponds to funktionslust. Lars Wilsson described the changed demeanor of Greta and Stina, when the captive beavers managed to build a dam in their enclosure. These yearling beavers had been captured as infants and had never seen a dam. Until they built theirs, they had not been particularly friendly and snarled at one another if they got too close. After the dam was built they began eating side by side, uttering friendly “talk” sounds. Not only did they no longer object to one another, they sought each other out to vocalize or groom. Greta and Stina also spent more time out of their nest box, swimming and diving in the water that their dam had deepened. The pride in accomplishment also seemed to have created friendship.
One observer described wild beavers whose dam had been severely damaged by human vandals at a season when material to repair it was hard to get. The observer arranged for suitable branches to be deposited in the pond while the beavers were asleep. The male of the pair was removing wood from his lodge to transfer to the dam when he discovered the branches. He began to swim among the branches, sniffing them and uttering loud, excited cries. One observer thought that the beaver was “rejoicing,” the other that he was “marveling,” but then, coming to their scientific senses, they agreed that the beaver’s “subjective feelings . . . were beyond our power to ascertain.”
Some captive animals experience little joy in life. For some, performing may be a chance to work, to display prowess, to feel proud. A tiger who cannot hunt, cannot mate with other tigers, and cannot explore and survey its territory has little chance of feeling pride. Perhaps, for some tigers, a chance to jump through a flaming hoop is better than nothing. But why should tigers have to settle for something that is better than nothing? To turn these magnificent animals into slaves, and then degrade them further by making them perform tricks for human amusement shows as much about human abasement as it does about animal capacities. That a tiger is condemned to slow death by boredom unless it finds pleasure in performing is a sad commentary on what humans have done to these magnificent predators.
The results of this distorted behavior affect the animals and trainers alike. Animal trainer Gunther Gebel-Williams had a tiger named India in his act for over twenty years. When he felt she was too old and deserved a rest, he stopped using her in the act, but every time he passed her cage while bringing the other tigers into the ring, she “cried.” Gebel-Williams felt so sorry for India that he put her back in the act, with unfortunate results, as she was later attacked and injured by another of the tigers. Her performance may have been a source of pride, and hence greater happiness than being caged into forced retirement, but that it was the only one she had was hardly of her own choice. Along with the pride, it is important to recognize the loss of dignity. If animal dignity is little documented, it may be because the history of human dealings with animals gives little occasion for its display. The human sense of animals as “lower” by definition provides little sense of its loss.
Arguing that dolphins may be on the verge of “accepting domestication,” Karen Pryor says that they enjoy performing tasks humans set for them. “I have seen a dolphin, striving to master an athletically difficult trick, actually refuse to eat its ‘reward’ fish until it got the stunt right.” It is difficult to maintain that the dolphin “enjoys” the challenge, unless we know what its alternatives are. Would a wild dolphin ever find pleasure in such a task? Perhaps this incident speaks for dolphins having a notion of justice, or just reward, but it is difficult to say. Similar behavior in wild dolphins would be more resonant and tell us more about their society.
Horse trainers commonly observe that some horses feel pride. Secretariat, who won the Kentucky Derby in 1973, was said to be proud. As evidence it was noted by trainers and jockeys that he refused to run unless he was allowed to run the race his way—to use his burst of speed early or late in a race, as he chose—despite the fact that he was usually a docile, biddable horse. When asked whether a dog that performs well in an obedience competition is proud of itself, animal trainer Ralph Dennard replied cautiously, “It seems like it’s proud of itself. They look like they’re proud. They’re confident; they’re happy; they stand up there,” and he threw out his chest as such a dog might.
Mike Del Ross of Guide Dogs for the Blind describes the gradual development of pride in dogs being trained for guide work. During the early stages, many dogs become uncertain of themselves. “It’s as if they’re thinking ‘This is way too hard. I can’t do this.’” The eyes of such dogs widen, giving them an overwhelmed look. They may lie down, go into a corner, or even huddle up in a ball. “If you don’t pick that up right away you’ll lose that dog.” But if the trainer backs up, gives the dog a break from work, lets it shake off its tension, and then walks the dog through the task (which can be something as simple as leading in a straight line), the dog can regain confidence. As the dog masters what it’s being asked to do, “All of a sudden their work gets a lot less shaky. . . . Everything comes together for them.” The body language of these dogs speaks of their self-confidence and pride. “Then in the end they realize, ‘I can do this!’ and they enjoy it. They’re proud of themselves.”
One Guide Dog trainee appeared to take pride in an accomplishment she was not taught. The dogs were housed in separate stalls opening onto a large run. Each morning when the trainers arrived, the dogs were let out into this area. A young German shepherd learned to flip the horseshoe latches on the stalls. Every morning she would let herself out and go from stall to stall letting the other dogs out. The horseshoe latches were replaced with leash hooks, and she learned to open those too. Finally the stalls were fastened with leather straps, and the shepherd’s efforts were thwarted, but kennel supervisor Kathy Finger smiles at the thought of the dog’s delight when she could still open the gates. “She was so proud of herself. She came running to us, as happy as could be, wagging her tail . . .”
People experience territorial pride; perhaps animals can too. The chimpanzee colony of which Washoe is a member recently moved into a large, new facility, with indoor and outdoor exercise areas. When one of Washoe’s human companions visited for the first time since the move, Washoe took her by the hand and led her from room to room, carefully showing her every nook and cranny. Washoe may have had other motivations, but she may simply have been proud of her spacious new quarters. Sharing her place, and her happiness in it, was also a sign of her feelings of friendship.
Freedom gives joy. Zookeepers, scientists who experiment with animals, and others with entrenched interests often argue that if all an animal’s needs are met, it will not care whether it is free or not. But many well-fed, well-treated captive animals regularly try to escape over and over again. Freedom is relative. In spring, when the chimpanzees at the Arnhem Zoo are allowed out of their win ter quarters for the first time, there is a scene of exultation as they scream and hoot, clasp and kiss one another, jump up and down and pound one another on the back. They are not free, but the additional space, the relatively greater freedom, thrills them. It looks as if it gives them joy.
George Schaller describes a two-year-old panda at a Chinese breeding center being given a rare chance to go into an outdoor enclosure. The panda burst from its darkened cage, trotted up a hill with a high-stepping gait, and somersaulted down. Again and again it raced up the hill and rolled back down. It “exploded with joy,” Schaller wrote.
One of the joys of freedom is surely the ability to control one’s own destiny, and a few scientists have argued that animals feel the need for such control. Zoologist J. Lee Kavanau gave white-footed mice (deer mice) the opportunity to adjust light levels in their cages by pressing a lever. He found that the mice preferred dim light to bright light or darkness, and if left alone would adjust the light level accordingly. But if he turned the lights up high the mice would frequently respond by making the cage completely dark. Conversely, if he made the cage completely dark, the mice would make the light as bright as possible. He also found that if he disturbed sleeping mice, so that they came out of their nest boxes to investigate, they would soon go back inside, but if he put them inside by hand, they would immediately come out, no matter how many times he replaced them. They cared about choice more than comfort. When given the opportunity to manage their environment, they battled fiercely for control. Because wild white-footed mice have far more control over their surroundings and activities, this matters more to a captive animal. Even if a zoo animal is supplied with all material wants, there may be something vital lacking, something it needs to be happy. One of the joys of freedom may simply be the ability to evade compulsion.
In a related vein is the story of Charles, a small octopus who was the subject of an experiment to see whether invertebrates could learn conditioned tasks as vertebrates do. With two others, Albert and Bertram, each housed in a small tank, Charles was to be trained to pull a switch so that a light went on, and then swim over to the light to be rewarded with a minute piece of fish. Albert and Bertram learned to perform this task and Charles seemed at first to be doing the same. But then Charles rebelled. He began anchoring himself to the side of the tank and yanking on the lever so fiercely that he eventually broke it. Instead of waiting under the light to receive his smidgen of fish, Charles reached out of the water, grabbed the light, and dragged it into the tank. Finally, he took to floating at the top of the tank, with his eyes above the surface, accurately squirting water at the experimenters. “The variables responsible for the maintenance and strengthening of the lamp-pulling and squirting behavior in this animal were not apparent,” the experimenter noted primly.
In a captive breeding and release site for thick-billed parrots located in an Arizona forest, the captive parrots awaiting release were healthy, glossy, and well fed. Amply supplied with food, water, safety, and companionship, they resembled the best-treated pet parrots. All the same, the free-flying parrots looked startlingly better to observers. It was hard to pin down the difference. Both groups of birds had glossy plumage and bright eyes. The demeanor of the two groups probably conveyed the difference. The captive parrots were not hunched or pathetic, but the wild parrots seemed ten times better: stronger, happier, and more confident. Even as they eyed the sky for hawks, they seemed to be reveling in life. In F. Fraser Darling’s classic A Herd of Red Deer, a similar observation is made of deer kept in paddocks compared to wild deer: something is missing.
Can animals ever be happy in captivity? Can a zoo ever be a good zoo in the sense of being a joyful zoo? Since animal behavior is so often flexible, this ought to be possible, but then most animals are not held captive by people who are asking what it would take to make the animal happy. They ask what it would take to make the animal docile, or to make a good exhibit, or to breed. The art of making zoo animals contented, thrilled, or joyous is not a subject of expertise.
Wolves breed in captivity, but it seems unlikely that a wolf who is constantly being stared at from nearby, a wolf with no place to hide, a wolf who cannot see the moon, can be a contented wolf. It may be that a wolf cannot be happy while making a good exhibit. A raccoon may be less likely to have this problem. It may have other problems, however, no less distorting of its nature. A happy animal needs to feel safe most of the time. If it is a social animal it needs company. It needs something that it can accomplish. A dish of food three times a day may be nutritionally equal to four hours of foraging, but it is not emotionally equal.
When Indah, an orangutan, escaped from her enclosure at the San Diego Zoo in June 1993 and clambered up onto the viewing deck, she neither headed for the hills nor attacked people. She chose to go through a garbage can, put a bag on her head, taste what she found, and dump an ashtray, surrounded by an interested audience. In other words, she indulged both her curiosity about what happens on the other side of the viewing deck and her need to act on her world in her own way. This seems to indicate that in her enclosure Indah was bored. She was not fulfilled. She had things she wanted to do that she was kept from doing. In zoos, visitor after visitor remarks on the apparent boredom of so many of the animals. Many people express a sense of unease, an understanding of how they would feel under such circumstances.
An animal also needs room to wander over a range appropriate to its species. For some small animals who cherish the vicinity of a burrow or nest, an ordinary zoo cage, if appropriately complex, might be big enough. No cage is big enough for a polar bear or a cougar. Whether an animal without freedom to choose its own environment, no matter how small, can be happy is a question that needs to be asked. Is not freedom of choice basic to the meaning of happiness? It is not surprising that a favored task for captive animals to be taught is the miming of happiness. Dolphins, confined in tiny spaces, deprived of most companionship, denied the use of many of their capacities, are trained to burst into the air in a shower of spray, to dance across the surface of the water and to leap in apparent joy. The joy may even be real, but it does not reflect the overall reality of the captive animals’ life.
Joy often expresses itself in play, which many animals indulge in all their lives. Play, which seems to be both a sign and a source of joy, has been increasingly studied in recent years, following a long period when the subject was considered in professional circles to be less than respectable. The longtime lack of study, according to Robert Fagen of the University of Pennsylvania, was a blacklash against the work of Karl Groos, who, at the end of the nineteenth century, argued for a link between play and aesthetics, depicting play as a simplified form of artistic endeavor. Fagen notes that “the study of animal play has never quite overcome its embarrassment at Groos’s attempt to unite animal psychology with aesthetics.” Biologists continue to be dismayed by the lay public’s interest in possible links between animal play and human creativity.
Fagen is unintimidated, and at the end of his book on play in animals, he writes:
In the play of animals we find a pure aesthetic that frankly defies science. Why kittens or puppies chase and vigorously paw at each other in reciprocal fashion without inflicting injury, repeating this behavior almost to the point of physical exhaustion, is not known. Yet this behavior fascinates, indeed enchants.
Some researchers also feel that the study of play has been neglected because play behavior has been inadequately defined. Various definitions have been propounded, more or less ponderous. Frustration is apparent in ethologist Robert Hinde’s definition: “Play is a general term for activities which seem to the observer to make no immediate contribution to survival.” That is, play is something done simply for the joy of doing it.
Unwieldy definitions of play (some mere lists of play behaviors) are probably better than none, however. Marc Bekoff, professor of biology at the University of Colorado, has noted a tendency among ethologists and behavioral scientists either to make definitions of difficult concepts so narrow as to be useless or to say that a concept that is difficult to define must therefore be impossible to study. “For example, some have claimed that social play is not a valid category of behavior because it is so difficult to define. While suggesting that we do away with social play by stipulatively defining it out of existence (or by defining social play as what it is not), few if any viable alternatives were offered; thus we were left with nothing!”
Play is important to animals, and, although it carries risks, since animals can be injured or killed while playing, a variety of evolutionary functions for it have been proposed. Perhaps it is a form of practice, of learning to perform tasks, theorists suggest; or perhaps it exercises developing social, neurological, or physical capacities. Cynthia Moss may have spoken for many biologists when, watching African elephants play in the rain—running, twirling, flapping ears and trunks, spraying water at each other, flailing branches, uttering loud play trumpets—she wrote in her notes, “How can one do a serious study of animals that behave this way!”
Hans Kruuk, studying spotted hyenas, complained that play “is an anthropomorphic term, negatively defined; I have merely used it as a label for some activities which in our own species would be named that way.” As an example of such activities Kruuk cited four adult hyenas swimming in a river, jumping in and out, splashing and pushing one another underwater. Kruuk adds that the hyenas made a substantial detour to reach the pool.
Elephants, both Indian and African, are particularly playful. A traveling circus once pitched its tents next to a schoolyard with a set of swings. The older elephants were chained, but Norma, a young elephant, was left loose. When Norma saw children swinging she was greatly intrigued. Before long she went over, waved the children away with her trunk, backed up to a swing, and attempted to sit on it. She was notably unsuccessful, even using her tail to hold the swing in place. Finally she flung the swing about irritably and returned to her companions. The children began to swing again, and Norma had to try again. Despite trying periodically for an hour, she was never able to swing.
Norma may have been looking for entertainment because she was bored. There seems no reason to doubt that animals can be bored. Nim Chimpsky often appeared to his sign language instructors to be bored and would demand to be taken to the toilet or to go to bed when his teachers felt strongly that he was just looking for a change from his lessons, like any schoolchild.
The life of many herbivores strikes many humans as intrinsically boring. Grazing animals eat the same foods all day long every day. This would certainly bore omnivores like us, but maybe buffalo have a higher tolerance for monotony. Maybe each blade of grass seems vastly different from the blade before. Perhaps their life is a rich tapestry of excitement and intrigue, but at a sensory level too far removed from ours to be apparent. In any case, to assume that a wild buffalo is bored with its life because it would bore some humans is true anthropomorphism.
Alaskan buffalo have been seen playing on ice. One at a time, starting from a ridge above a frozen lake, the buffalo charged down to the shore and plunged onto the ice, bracing their legs so that they spun across the ice, with their tails in the air. As each buffalo skidded to a halt, it let out a loud bellow, “a kind of gwaaa sound”—and then awkwardly picked its way back to shore to make another run.
Animals can play in complete solitude. Bears are playful throughout their lives and will slide on snowbanks like otters—headfirst, feet first, on the stomach, on the back, while somersaulting. Two grizzly bears in the Rockies were seen to wrestle for possession of a log. The bear who triumphed lay on its back and juggled the log on its feet while roaring with delight. A quieter grizzly floated in a mountain lake on a hot day. It ducked its muzzle beneath the water to blow bubbles—and then reached out to pop them with its long claws. Tiger cubs and leopards love to jump off branches into water and will do so repeatedly. Bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees) in the San Diego Zoo play solitary games of blindman’s bluff. The bonobo covers its eyes with a leaf or bag or simply puts its fingers or arm over its eyes, and then staggers about the climbing frame.
At one time the gold leaf on the domes of the Kremlin was being scratched off by hooded crows. The crows were not indulging their fabled penchant for theft. They had simply found that it was enormous fun to slide down those onion domes, and their claws did significant damage. Eventually they were driven away by a combination of recorded crow distress calls and regular patrols by tame falcons.
Animals may also play with objects. This can be seen even in some animals that are not known to play with other animals. A captive Komodo dragon in a British zoo played with a shovel, pushing it noisily about the enclosure. A meter-long wild alligator in Georgia spent forty-five minutes playing with the drops of water falling from a pipe into a pond, stalking the pipe, snapping at the drops, letting them fall on his snout and then snapping at them in midair. Captive gorillas and chimpanzees enjoy playing with dolls and spend time in other imaginative play, as when Koko the gorilla pretends to brush her teeth with a toy banana, or when the chimpanzee Loulis, playing alone, puts a board on his head, signing “That’s a hat.”
In other animals, object play quickly becomes social play. A captive dolphin at an oceanarium played with a feather, carrying it to an intake pipe, letting it be swept off by the current, and then chasing it. Another dolphin joined in and they are said to have taken turns. In another game three or four dolphins vied for possession of a feather, and wild dolphins play similar keep-away games with various objects. Beluga whales carry stones or seaweed on their heads and the other whales at once try to knock them off. Lions, both adults and cubs, may try to wrest pieces of bark or twigs from each other.
Teasing is a form of play, at least for the one doing the teasing. Some animals tease conspecifics; they may also tease members of other species. A captive dolphin teased a turtle by tossing it out of the water and rolling it along the bottom of the tank. Another dolphin teased a fish that lived in a rock crevice in the tank by putting bits of squid near the hole; when the fish came out to get the squid, the dolphin would snatch it away. Many people who visit captive dolphins see them mercilessly tease sea lions and seals with whom they share pools. Ravens tease peregrines by flying closer and closer past them, croaking, until the falcon lunges after them. Swans, with their large dignity, are often the target of teasing. In the water, little grebes have been seen to tweak swans’ tails and then dive. On land, carrion crows may pull their tails repeatedly, leaping back each time the swan turns on them.
Foxes tease less nimble hyenas by coming close, circling, then sprinting away until the hyena can no longer ignore it and lunges for the fox. Several cases of hyenas actually catching and killing such a fox have been reported. Maybe the fox is gaining information about the hyena’s powers, useful when the fox snatches bites from the hyena’s kills. Maybe the fox is accustoming the hyena to its presence, also useful when pillaging kills. This gives a practical explanation for why such behavior persists, but it does not explain what the fox feels. Why should the fox not feel the mischievousness that has been imputed to the species over the centuries?
Other forms of play seem to be enjoyable for all involved. Young animals and sometimes adults commonly wrestle, mock-fight, and chase one another. Sifaka lemurs lie on their backs with the soles of their hind feet pressed together and “bicycle.” A favorite game of young animals of many species, from wolves to red deer, is King of the Castle, where one player occupies a high place and defends it against the onslaughts of the others. Troops of sifaka and ring-tailed lemurs often tease by barring the other troop’s passage, with animals jumping in front of each other, over each other, around each other. Unlike genuine territorial disputes, the two troops mingle and bound in all directions rather than aiming for a particular goal.
To what extent animals playing games recognize implicit rules is not clear. In a few instances trainers have successfully taught formalized games to animals. A simplified version of cricket was taught to elephants of the Bertram Mills’ Circus after several months of training. Elephants understand throwing objects, but batting and fielding took time to learn. It is said that after some months the elephants began to “enter into the spirit of the game” and subsequently played with great enthusiasm.
At an oceanarium, several dolphins were trained in the skills of water polo. First they learned to put a ball through a goal, each team having a different goal. Then the trainers tried to teach them to compete by keeping the other team from scoring. After three training sessions the dolphins caught on, all too well. Uninterested in strictures against foul play, the dolphins zestfully attacked one another in such an unsporting fashion that the training was discontinued and they were never again given competitive games. There is no indication that the dolphins thereafter tried to play polo on their own.
Animals sometimes find playmates across the barrier of species. In captivity, species that would be unlikely to meet in the wild are often brought together. Thus a leopard and a dog may play together, or a cat and a gorilla. One family that kept red kangaroos in their backyard with their dogs found the animals quite friendly toward each other, although there were difficulties. The dogs liked to chase and be chased by their friends, barking. The kangaroos preferred to wrestle and box, pastimes the dogs did not care for. Somehow they managed to play together.
Interspecies play, while not routine, is also found in the wild. Dwarf mongooses in Kenya have been seen attempting to play with ground squirrels, lizards, and birds. Here again, the different styles of play can form a barrier. M’Bili, a young mongoose rebuffed by her mongoose playmates, ran over to a large lizard, hopping and uttering play calls, and began tossing dead leaves about. When this produced no reaction, she danced around the lizard, tapping it and pretending to nibble at the lizard’s back, forefoot, and face. The lizard closed its eyes and did not respond, and M’Bili gave up.
Another mongoose, Moja, tried to play with an African ground squirrel as he would play with another mongoose. Moja was playing with another mongoose when the squirrel hopped into their midst and, standing on its hind legs, stopped to gnaw on a nut. Moja raced over giving the “play call,” rose on his hind legs, put his forepaws on the squirrel’s shoulders, and started to “waltz” around with the squirrel. A playful mongoose follows this by pretending to snap at the other animal’s head and neck, which Moja did, but the squirrel didn’t respond, simply standing passively and letting itself be waltzed around. Then Moja pounced on the squirrel’s tail and bit it, whereupon the squirrel hopped away and Moja attacked a twig instead.
Tatu, another young mongoose, had better luck with a white-headed buffalo weaverbird. Tatu chased the bird, making jumps up into the air at it. Instead of departing, the bird flew no more than a foot off the ground, repeatedly skimmed over Tatu’s head, and landed on twigs close to her. Tatu was the first to tire of this game. In a still more successful match, wild river otter cubs and beaver kits have been seen playing together. Adult beavers and otters were present and paid no attention as two cubs and two kits nosed, nudged, and chased each other, both on a stream bank and in the water. The play continued until the otter parents moved their family along. Young mangabey and red-tailed monkeys, whose troops often forage together in the Tanzanian rain forest, also play-wrestle together. Interspecies play, a commonality in nature, has a special charm for humans. If two species of animals can reach out joyfully across the gap between them, it seems that humans, too, might reach across and share their joy.
Sometimes the gap between species can be very wide. Douglas Chadwick describes an old bull elephant drinking at springs in Africa. Near one pool he met a tiny blacksmith plover. Ferociously the bird lifted its wings and shrieked a threat. The huge animal departed. “While leaving, though, the old bull pranced a little bit, shaking his head, as if laughing to himself.” Chadwick concedes that this description can be called anthropomorphic, that some would insist on saying that the elephant “was merely exhibiting displacement behavior, releasing a bit of tension built up in response to the bird’s threat. But what is the difference between this and many occasions that cause us to shrug and shake our heads, laughing to ourselves? In fact, that is exactly what I did when blacksmith plovers stalked forward yelling at me.” To refuse to see the commonality between person and elephant is to deliberately widen the gap. Another gap may come between the elephant and the bird. The elephant seems to have been amused by this encounter, but there is no reason to guess that the plover saw the joke.
Sometimes the gap may be too wide. In Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson’s authoritative work on ants, we find a section tided “Ants Do Not Play” in which they refute the notion, put forward by several observers, that ants may be seen to play. The wrestling ants observed by Huber and by Stumper were not playing but in earnest, Hölldobler and Wilson argue: the contestants were members of different colonies fighting to master each other. “In short, these activities have a simple explanation having nothing to do with play. We know of no behavior in ants or any other social insects that can be construed as play or social practice behavior approaching the mammalian type.” Yet nineteenth-century naturalist Henry Water Bates’s description of Eciton ants in Brazil does not sound like fighting.
I frequently saw them very leisurely employed in a way that looked like recreation. When this happened, the place was always a sunny nook in the forest. . . . Instead of pressing forward eagerly, and plundering right and left, they seemed to have been all smitten with a sudden fit of laziness. Some were walking slowly about, others were brushing their antennae with their fore feet; but the drollest sight was their cleaning one another. Here and there an ant was seen stretching forth first one leg and then another, to be brushed and washed by one or more of its comrades, who performed the task by passing the limb between the jaws and the tongue, finishing by giving the antennae a friendly wipe. . . . The actions of those ants looked like simple indulgence in idle amusement. Have these little creatures, then, an excess of energy beyond what is required for labors absolutely necessary to the welfare of their species, and do they thus expend it in mere sportive-ness, like young lambs or kittens, or in idle whims like rational beings? It is probable that these hours of relaxation and cleaning are indispensable to the effective performance of their harder labors; but while looking at them, the conclusion that the ants were engaged merely in play was irresistible.
Perhaps Bates is right, and some ants do play. When people think of playing with animals, we tend to think of playing with dogs or cats. It is hard to imagine playing with an ant, but this is no reason to decide that ants cannot play with one another.
There is something compelling in the recognition that other creatures enjoy play as much as we do. Jacques Cousteau wrote of whales as “sociable, affectionate, devoted, gentle, captivating, high-spirited creatures. The entire ocean is their empire—and their playground. Theirs is a ‘leisure society’ that predates ours by some forty million years. They spend less than a tenth of their lives looking for food and feeding. The rest of the time they spend swimming, frolicking in the waves, conversing with each other, wooing the opposite sex, and rearing their young—an inoffensive agenda if ever there was one!”
Scientists and laypeople alike have long been fascinated by the social play of canids—wolves, dogs, coyotes—because it so clearly involves a shared understanding of language and of social bonds. The play bow—when a canid lowers its forelegs to the ground and waves its tail—is a way of saying: “Everything that follows is just a game. Are you ready to play?” Dogs will attempt to play with another animal, cats, for example, but are usually disappointed in their lack of fluency in or indifference to this canid metalanguage. This gives special poignance to the play between a dog and its human friend, as if dogs recognize that they have found a companion to whom they can teach the rules. Nor do they seem unhappy at trying to figure out human rules for the games we wish to play with them. The concentrated posture a dog assumes over a stick he is waiting for his human friend to move is obviously meant to be slightly humorous: that is part of the game. Playing these games is almost like looking through a window into the dog’s mind. We see what he intends. And the dog, too, gets a clear glimpse into our minds and knows what we want. Play, laughter, and friendship burst across the species barrier.