Bradshaw, J.W., Pullen, A.J. and Rooney, N.J., 2015. Why do adult dogs ‘play’?. Behavioural processes, 110, pp.82-87.
Among carnivorous animals, play behaviour is usually made up of motor patterns characteristic of: predatory, agonistic and courtship behaviour.
Domestic dogs, however, are unusual in that play is often performed by adults, both socially, with conspecifics (members of the same species) and with humans, and also a-socially (on their own), with objects. This enhanced playfulness is commonly thought to be a side effect of paedomorphosis, the continuation of juvenile or puppy-like traits into adulthood, but here we suggest that the functions of the different types of play are sufficiently distinct that they are unlikely to have arisen through a single evolutionary mechanism.
Solitary play with objects appears to be derived from predatory behaviour: preferred toys are those that can be dismembered, and a complex habituation-like feedback system inhibits play with objects that are resistant to alteration.
Intraspecific (between the same species) social play is structurally different from interspecific (between different species) play and may therefore be motivationally distinct and serve different goals; for example, dogs often compete over objects when playing with other dogs, but are usually more cooperative when the play partner is human.
The majority of dogs do not seem to regard competitive games played with a human partner as “dominance” contests: rather, winning possession of objects during games appears to be simply rewarding.
Play may be an important factor in sociality, since dogs are capable of extracting social information not only from games in which they participate, but also from games that they observe between third parties.
The authors propose that the domestic dog’s characteristic playfulness in social contexts is an adaptive trait, selected during domestication to
- facilitate both training for specific purposes;
- the formation of emotionally-based bonds between dog and owner
- Play frequency and form may therefore be
an indicator of the quality of dog-owner relationships.