Play fighting revisited: its design features and how they shape our understanding of its mechanism and functions
Loading...
Date
2024
Authors
Pellis, Sergio M.
Pellis, Vivien C.
Ham, Jackson R.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Frontiers Media
Abstract
Play fighting has been one of the most intensely studied forms of play and so has
provided some of our deepest insights into the understanding of play in general. As
the label implies, this behavior resembles serious fighting, in that the animals
compete for an advantage over one another, but unlike true aggression, for play
fighting to remain playful, it also incorporates a degree of cooperation and
reciprocity – restrained competition seems to be its hallmark. Despite these
common features, it should be noted that both the advantage competed over
and the mechanisms by which restraint is achieved varies across species. Such
variation mitigates simple generalities. For example, how empirical support for a
proposed adaptive function in one species not being replicated in another, is to be
interpreted. What has emerged over the past few decades is that play fighting is
diverse, varying across several dimensions, some superficial, some fundamental,
making choosing species to compare a challenge. In this paper,we explore various
design features that constitute play fighting and the ways these can be modified
across different species and lineages of species. Given that a major pillar of
ethology is that description precedes explanation, having a good grasp of the
behavioral diversity of play fighting is an essential starting point for detailed
analyses of the mechanisms and functions of play. We show that commonalities
across species likely involve different mechanisms than do species idiosyncrasies,
and that different styles of play fighting likely afford different adaptive opportunities
Description
Open access article. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0 DEED) applies
Keywords
Targets , Tactics , Aggression , Sex , Affiliation , Predation , Adaptation , Evolutionary by-product , Play fighting
Citation
Pellis, S. M., Pellis, V. C., & Ham, J. R. (2024). Play fighting revisited: Its design features and how they shape our understanding of its mechanisms and functions. Frontiers in Ethology, 3, Article e1362052. https://doi.org/10.3389/fetho.2024.1362052