The Genesis Of Animal Play

A scientist examines the origins and evolutionary significance of play in humans and animals.

Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior. It was widely thought that animal play, mostly in mammals, was part of Darwinian natural selection and somehow fit into survival of the fittest. However, animal researchers believe that animals play out of pure joy, rather than aiding in their survival. This jovial book about animal play, tells the secrets of, and the science behind, clever baboons that know which cars to break into for snacks, mighty elephants that grieve, tricky octopuses that squirt water, and beetles that read messages through their feet. This book includes explanative text by award-winning author Rebecca Stefoff and an extensive bibliography. Key scientific terms and phrases are explained and includes procedures for scientific observation.

In this innovative analysis - the first comprehensive, single-author treatment of the subject in this century - Robert Fagen breaks new ground by adopting an evolutionary approach to behavioral development. Basing his research on the natural history of play in animals, as well as on recent advances in theoretical biology, he resolves an essential biological paradox: mammals, including humans, and birds, of every age and species, spend time and energy - even risk physical injury - performing the seemingly inconsequential activities referred to colloquially as play. Features of this unique book include a detailed review of the natural history of play in mammalian and avian species (supplemented by an extensive bibliography); sociobiological analysis of the shifting balance between selfishness and cooperation in animal social play; and discussion of the biological mechanisms underlying beneficial and hamrful effects of play behavior. Robert Fagen uses previously unexploited theory to investigate the phenomenon of play and to generate several novel or unusual insights and questions. His clear, literate style, enhanced by notes, appendices, and numerous lively illustrations, serves to communicate, entertain, and educate professionals and academics as well as general readers who are fascinated with the natural history, psychology, and behavior of animals.

For most people, animals are the most significant aspects of the nonhuman world. They symbolize nature in our imaginations, in popular media and culture, and in campaigns to preserve wilderness, yet scholars habitually treat animals and the environment as mutually exclusive objects of concern. Conducting the first examination of animals' place in popular and scholarly thinking about nature, Anna L. Peterson builds a nature ethic that conceives of nonhuman animals as active subjects who are simultaneously parts of both nature and human society. Peterson explores the tensions between humans and animals, nature and culture, animals and nature, and domesticity and wildness. She uses our intimate connections with companion animals to examine nature more broadly. Companion animals are liminal creatures straddling the boundary between human society and wilderness, revealing much about the mutually constitutive relationships binding humans and nature together. Through her paradigm-shifting reflections, Peterson disrupts the artificial boundaries between two seemingly distinct categories, underscoring their fluid and continuous character.

Play, Sport, and Spirit Patrick Kelly, SJ Play, Sport, and Spirit retrieves a much needed ‘play ethic’ from Catholic cultural and theological sources and brings this into dialogue with evolutionary theory, contemporary philosophy and psychology to illuminate the human and spiritual meaning of sport and work. After a discussion of the marginalization of the play element in contemporary sport in the U.S., the author uses the work of cultural historian Johan Huizinga to understand the meaning of play and how it is related to culture, ritual, festival, and spirituality. Basic to this "play ethic" is an acceptance of play as a part of human life. For Aquinas, play is enjoyable and done for its own sake. However, the enjoyment we experience in play is directed to the "good of the player" in that it brings pleasure and relaxation. Using the work of scholars Gordon Burghardt (evolutionary psychology), Randolph Feezell (philosophy), and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (psychology) the book demonstrates that when sport is enjoyable and engaged in for its own sake (i.e., as play), it leads to human flourishing and openness to transcendence. In this way, the book provides a contemporary account of how play can be autotelic and yet benefit the human person, as Aquinas had claimed. The in-depth consideration of play in this book also illuminates our understanding of the human and spiritual meaning of work and vocation.

As human beings, what is our true relationship to the animals on earth? What is our responsibility to our fellow creatures? Douglas Sloan explores these and other questions in this important book on the human-animal connection. His explorations are based on personal experience and wide-ranging research into the work of Rudolf Steiner and others, including scientist students of the inner life of animals and committed defenders of animal wellbeing. Rudolf Steiner describes how from the beginning of creation humans and animals have been united in deep kinship. A loss of the sense of this human–animal connection has resulted in an immense animal suffering the world over. Especially in their suffering, the animals now pose for the modern human being many pressing and perplexing questions. Are the animals conscious? Do they have feelings like ours? Do they experience pain? Do the animals have a spiritual reality and experience? Do the animals have souls and selves? Do the animals have capacities for cognitive intelligence, emotional empathy, language, and memory? Is there a crucial difference between the human and the animal, a basic difference in kind, or only a difference in degree? Do animals have rights? Are we justified in using the animals as we wish—eating them, hunting them, experimenting on them? Rudolf Steiner presents a vision of the ultimate redemption of the animals from their suffering. What is the nature of this redemption? What is our responsibility in making it happen? In exploring these and related questions with the help of Rudolf Steiner’s work and that of others on the issue, we can begin to see the importance in our time of our relating to the animals in a completely new way—a relationship that understands and respects the animals’ inner spiritual being, and one that requires a deep grasp of our own spiritual being in relation to theirs. In this book, Douglas Sloan seeks to help us toward this new relationship with the animals, both in concept and in everyday action.

"The Creative Lives of Animals offers readers intimate glimpses of how animals from elephants to alligators to ants apply the creative process in their lives, requiring a redefinition of creativity that includes animals as essential contributors to biodiversity"--