We Need to Play For the Same Reason Puppies Do

Dogs don’t have the kinds of aspirations children do. I don’t think they dream of going to space or digging holes to China. But they do play, just like kids.

Our children’s games must have evolved to help set us up to practice skills we might need in the future to ensure survival. Running, chasing, racing and hiding may not be evolutionarily important to most of us in 2012, but they’re still habits that were handed down from our ancestors and are still considered parts of normal kid behavior. Hell, from what I understand, racing is part of normal sperm behavior.

It’s not a huge stretch to think that other games also evolved to help us succeed in adulthood. Like, maybe “Mother May I” evolved to encourage polite behavior. Because the winner would somehow be the one most likely to get laid. Okay, I don’t know about that one. But how about Spin The Bottle? I have to think that the cavemen with the imaginations that brought us that one were more likely to procreate than those paleo-times sixth graders who invented the Stick Your Head In Tiger’s Mouth game.

Of course, physical play seems to help juveniles from many species get stronger and hone their motor skills. But developmental psychology has also found that it serves as a form of social training, teaching young animals codes of social behavior and helping them understand where they fit into the social hierarchy of their community. Research by University of Colorado psychologist Marc Bekoff indicates that play teaches animals a sense of morality. By roughhousing, animals create social bonds, acquire different dominance ranks and learn what behaviors are acceptable: how hard they can bite, how roughly they can interact and how to resolve conflicts — all lessons they can generalize to other situations.

In a Developmental Review paper from 2007, “Play in evolution and development,” Anthony D. Pellegrini, Danielle Dupuis, and Peter K. Smith posit as much. They suggest that play between young rhesus monkeys creates bonds and behavioral patterns that make it more likely that they’ll thrive in a community and reproduce. Fooling around is “a relatively low cost way in which to develop alternative responses to new and challenging environments. By low cost we mean one that has low-risk and likely to be incorporated into the behavioral repertoire and eventually into the genotype.”

Human evolution seems to favor innovation and creativity. Or at least it did. Today I don’t think that the smartest, most innovative ones among us are the ones reproducing at the highest rates. (We’re too busy raising dogs.)

A child who creates imaginary worlds is a child who, on some level, is practicing for the unknown, but possible. He might become an intergalactic space traveler or a lion hunter. Or a teacher or a dad. Video games help with our hand-eye coordination, but they also can train us to think analytically, to be more aware of our surroundings and to work better together. Right now, in school yards and rec rooms and on Facebook pages kids are preparing for the future. But they’re also preparing the future. Did NASA give kids something to dream about, or was it the consequence of childhood fantasies? I’d say, both.

Correlations have been made between the complexity and flexibility of an organism and the length of its period of immaturity. In humans, that period is long, which allows for lots of time for experimentation and selection. Our beloved snotty-nosed brats don’t know they’re honing skills — be it running and chasing skills, or social problem solving ones. They’re just having fun. But it’s fun that is absolutely necessary.

So do all animals play? No, not really. I’ve hung out with some bearded dragons and I don’t think they know how to have a good time. University of Tennessee Professor Gordon Burghardt’s “Surplus Resource Theory” attempts to explain, among other things, why mammals are believed to be more playful than, say, reptiles. The theory suggests it is because humans and other creatures who enjoy tennis balls have better energy stores and a greater capacity for sustained vigorous activity; longer periods of freedom from threats and food shortages due to parental care; a susceptibility to boredom; and an environment full of novelty. As humans, we have the perfect conditions for lots of playtime. In fact, our acquisition of pet dogs who serve no useful purpose could be considered an extension of our desire to play. In turn, we’ve provided dogs with food, shelter, and safety. And those conditions, together with pets’ own natural energy resources, make their environments super conducive to playing. But they’re not playing Marco Polo or chess or Minecraft: They’re playing games that are helping to hone the kinds of skills they’d need should they ever need to fight for survival, Katniss Everdine style.

In an adult dog’s life, he may need to bark really loud to scare off an enemy. He may need to dig to hide something. Or search for food. Or tug an animal apart. And it’ll certainly be helpful if he can hump. Dogs keep doing these things into adulthood, probably because they have evolved to be kind of perma-puppies. While on the road trip to the kind of maturity we see in wolves, today’s dogs pulled over at the rest stop and got lost in the ball pit. And that’s okay. Just like it’s now okay for grown men to be on kickball teams and play video games at the dinner table. If there really is a link between the length of a being’s immature period and its complexity, then dogs are crazy complex.

As a perma-puppy, it’s normal that an adult dog should still want to dig and chase and do all the things that might help him out should he ever find himself in some sort of proto-dog situation – a canine version of Deliverance. That’s why, as a dog trainer, I love “Work-to-eat toys,” also known as “puzzle toys” or “enrichment toys.” These are toys that turn eating into an interactive game that can fulfill their need to seek and discover. Dogs — especially dogs who live alone — need that kind of physical and mental stimulation. It’s necessary fun.

It’s especially important for puppies to get a lot of playtime with toys, humans, and other puppies. Puppy play is all about practicing life skills, and learning social cues and boundaries in the process. Indeed, a danger of taking a puppy away from his siblings too soon is that he may not have learned the kind of bite control and inhibition that he would’ve if he’d been with sisters and brothers to police him during play.

Really, this is a similar fear some harbor about having an only child: siblings might help model the kind of “play-nice-with-others” skills that can help a child grow into a well-adjusted grownup. Solo play can’t provide that kind of feedback.

Then again, you could always get the kid a dog.