Includes play and sleep.
A variety of animals have been found to interact with and manipulate inanimate objects ‘just for fun’, that is, to play. Most clear examples of object play come from mammals and birds. However, whether insects...
Sleep is an important aspect of great ape life; these animals build sleeping platforms every night. In a community of chimpanzees, each subgroup selects a sleeping site where each individual builds a sleeping platform, mostly...
Challenges are there to be overcome – seen usually as problems to avoid rather than as opportunities to enjoy. However, for humans a life without challenge would be likely to be dull and boring, lacking...
In nature, animals need to actively engage with the environment in order to prosper in survival and reproduction. Hence, agency is a central adaptive characteristic of animal life. In this paper, I propose that from...
Laboratory rats have been an important model species with which to study the neurobiology of rough-and-tumble play (RTP). RTP in rats involves competition to gain access to the partner’s nape of the neck, which is...
Locomotion in non-human primates, including walking, climbing, and brachiating among other types of movement (but not pacing), is a species-typical behavior that varies with age, social housing conditions, and environmental factors (e.g., season, food availability...
Many species of birds are housed in zoos globally and are some of the most popular of animals kept under human care. Careful observations of how species live and behave in their natural habitats can...
Social play is a dynamic and rewarding behavior abundantly expressed by most mammals during the juvenile period. While its exact function is debated, various rodent studies on the effects of juvenile social isolation suggest that...
The low replicability of scientific studies has become an important issue. One possible cause is low representativeness of the experimental design employed. Already in the 1950’s, Egon Brunswick pointed out that experimental setups ideally should...
Play and welfare have long been linked within animal research literature, with play considered as both a potential indicator and promoter of welfare. An indicator due to observations that play is exhibited most frequently in...