The Genesis of Animal Play: Testing the Limits

by Gordon M. Burghardt, Brian Sutton-Smith

Overview

In The Genesis of Animal Play, Gordon Burghardt examines the origins and evolution of play in humans and animals. He asks what play might mean in our understanding of evolution, the brain, behavioral organization, and psychology. Is play essential to development? Is it the driving force behind human and animal behavior? What is the proper place for the study of play in the cognitive, behavioral, and biological sciences?

The engaging nature of play—who does not enjoy watching a kitten attack a ball of yarn?—has made it difficult to study. Some scholars have called play undefinable, nonexistent, or a mystery outside the realm of scientific analysis. Using the comparative perspectives of ethology and psychology, The Genesis of Animal Play goes further than other studies in reviewing the evidence of play throughout the animal kingdom, from human babies to animals not usually considered playful. Burghardt finds that although playfulness may have been essential to the origin of much that we consider distinctive in human (and mammalian) behavior, it only develops through a specific set of interactions among developmental, evolutionary, ecological, and physiological processes. Furthermore, play is not always beneficial or adaptive.

Part I offers a detailed discussion of play in placental mammals (including children) and develops an integrative framework called surplus resource theory. The most fascinating and most controversial sections of the book, perhaps, are in the seven chapters in part II in which Burghardt presents evidence of playfulness in such unexpected groups of animals as kangaroos, birds, lizards, and "Fish That Leap, Juggle, and Tease." Burghardt concludes by considering the implications of the diversity of play for future research, and suggests that understanding the origin and development of play can shape our view of society and its accomplishments through history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262524698
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	08/11/2006
Series:	A Bradford Book
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	520
Sales rank:	878,043
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.95(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Gordon Burghardt is Alumni Distinguished Professor in Psychology and in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee. He is a coeditor of The Cognitive Animal (MIT Press, 2002), past president of the Animal Behavior Society, and editor of the Journal of Comparative Psychology.

What People are Saying About This

Jaak Panksepp

A sign of our scientific times: The study of play (a process we value as a society) has lagged far behind the study of fear (a process we abhor). Burghardt now puts matters back in perspective with his critically open-minded and exquisitely detailed excursion through the evolutionary spectrum of playfulness on the face of the earth.

Anthony D. Pellegrini

Burghardt's book breaks new ground in the long and distringuished study of animal play. Using surplus resource theory, he proffers a new definition of lay and extends it to the study of variety of species, such as reptiiles, fish, birds, as well as mammals.

Marc Bekoff

The Genesis of Animal Play is the most comprehensive interdisciplinary study I've seen on this most mysterious behavior. It will be a keystone work for all those interested in the evolution and development of play, but it covers a remarkably broad range of other topics. Do octopi, turtles, or fish play? Read this book and find out. I did, and learned much even after three decades of studying carnivores at play.

Endorsement

The Genesis of Animal Play is the most comprehensive interdisciplinary study I've seen on this most mysterious behavior. It will be a keystone work for all those interested in the evolution and development of play, but it covers a remarkably broad range of other topics. Do octopi, turtles, or fish play? Read this book and find out. I did, and learned much even after three decades of studying carnivores at play.

—Marc Bekoff, University of Colorado, author of Minding Animals and editor of Animal Play and Encyclopedia Of Animal Behavior

From the Publisher

A sign of our scientific times: The study of play (a process we value as a society) has lagged far behind the study of fear (a process we abhor). Burghardt now puts matters back in perspective with his critically open-minded and exquisitely detailed excursion through the evolutionary spectrum of playfulness on the face of the earth.

—Jaak Panksepp, Distinguished Research Professor, Emeritus, Bowling Green State University, author of Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions

Burghardt's book breaks new ground in the long and distringuished study of animal play. Using surplus resource theory, he proffers a new definition of lay and extends it to the study of variety of species, such as reptiiles, fish, birds, as well as mammals.

—Anthony D. Pellegrini, Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Minnesota

The Genesis of Animal Play is the most comprehensive interdisciplinary study I've seen on this most mysterious behavior. It will be a keystone work for all those interested in the evolution and development of play, but it covers a remarkably broad range of other topics. Do octopi, turtles, or fish play? Read this book and find out. I did, and learned much even after three decades of studying carnivores at play.

—Marc Bekoff, University of Colorado, author of Minding Animals and editor of Animal Play and Encyclopedia Of Animal Behavior