Date:
LUDICS
SPEAKER: Robert M. Fagen, Ronin Institute, Montclair, NJ
RESPONDENT: Brian Boyd, The University of Auckland, New Zealand
Dogs wrestle and chase, lambs gambol, and ravens do acrobatics. Scientists have never satisfactorily explained why animals do these and similar things that seem to make no contribution to reproductive success. Indeed, this "why" of play, the Holy Grail of play research, remains as distant as ever. It is as if there were something more, something that we have forgotten (or never knew) how to see. This seminar employs a zoological perspective on animal play, offering some ideas that scientists have proposed and that may interest humanists (including latter-day ludicists).
The "what" and the "how" (though not the "why") of animal play are well known to science based on almost a century of research worldwide. Play behavior cannot be defined in philosophically rigorous terms, but ethologists share a general consensus about defining features of play in animals. (1) Play is spontaneous and self-rewarding. (2) Play is shielded from the risks that would accompany serious performances of the same motor acts. (3) Play consists of action sequences that are restructured and improvised versions of their serious counterparts, -- exaggeration, repetition, incomplete acts and sequences, and novel combinations are the characteristic structural features that make play look different. (4) Play is sensitive to prevailing conditions, generally occurs when the player is free from illness or stress, is typically, though perhaps not invariably, an indicator of well-being. When it takes a particular "playful" form, play, is accompanied by a particular positive mood state in which the individual is more inclined to behave in a spontaneous and flexible way. This positive mood state is not always detectable in observable behavior, but it is an important subcategory of the broader biological category of play.
As a scientist, my studies of animal play have been guided and inspired by the magisterial work of another, far more famous zoologist, Vladimir Nabokov, and by Professor Brian Boydʼs insightful and thoughtful interpretations and extensions of Nabokovʼs work in an authentically evolutionary approach to human art and storytelling. In Pale Fire, Nabokovʼs John Shade asked himself whether he should stop investigating his abyss. Shade basically threw a Hail Mary, or was thrown for one, and scored a game-winning touchdown: "Not text, but texture; not the dream / but topsy-turvical coincidence". Unhitching. If there is one key that might well unlock the mystery behind the question "What use is play", it is what Claude Lévi-Strauss, in the final paragraph of Tristes Tropiques, termed "se déprendre", "unhitching". Bernard Suits, in his classic work The Grasshopper, sought to capture this idea in the specific context of human games and pursued it relentlessly to some surprising conclusions. This notion is well entrenched in certain branches of the humanities but is only now beginning to take shape in biology. A web of sense, and a dark Vanessa at Heavenʼs gate.
About the Speakers
Robert M. Fagen is a retired University of Alaska faculty member and currently works part-time as a GED examiner at a Juneau Adult Education Center. His primary research interest is the biology of animal play. His book "Animal Play Behavior" (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1981) remains a standard reference on the topic. His current interests in animal play span the phylogenetic spectrum of playful and possibly playful species, with special emphases on birds and nonhuman mammals. He is currently writing a new scholarly book on animal play.
He conducted a ten-year field study of play behavior in brown bears Ursus arctos on Admiralty Island, Alaska, in collaboration with Johanna Fagen. They found that play experience increases survival in the young brown bears we studied. This finding and others reported subsequently by other researchers and on other species indicate that play has benefits that can be measured in ecological currency — survival, for example — or, less directly, with broadly accepted surrogate measures.
In addition to his new animal play book, his current research and writing projects include:
- a field study of flight-bathing and flight-bathing play in Tringa sandpipers in the Juneau, Alaska area
- tabulation and analysis of brown bear-bird play observations from the Admiralty Island field study noted above
- a review of play and playlike behaviors in birds
- opportunistic observations of play in Juneau-area birds, particularly Northern Ravens Corvus corax, American (“Northwestern”) Crows Corvus brachyrhynchos, and Bald Eagles Haliaeetus leucocephalus
- research methods in animal behavior, including data analysis and visualization, statistics, and movement notation.
He has studied the Tlingit language for five years.He has performed in local productions of the Nutcracker ballet each year since 1992.
Brian Boyd, Ph.D. is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at The University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is an expert on the life and works of author Vladimir Nabokov and on literature and evolution.
How to Join
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If you have any questions, please contact Vassiliki Rapti at vasiliki_rapti@emerson.edu
