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Kingdom of play : what ball-bouncing octopuses, belly-flopping monkeys, and mud-sliding elephants reveal about life itself / David Toomey.

by Toomey, David, 1956- author.

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New York, NY : Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2024.

Play behavior in animals.

Evolution (Biology)

9781982154462 (hardcover) :

1982154462 (hardcover)

xv, 281 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

First Scribner hardcover edition.

Introduction -- Ball-bouncing octopuses : what is play? -- The Kalahari meerkat project : The hypotheses of play -- Tumbling piglets and somersaulting monkeys : training for the unexpected -- "Let's go tickle some rats" : the neuroscience of play -- Courtly canines : competing to cooperate and cooperating to compete -- Wood thrush songs. herring gull drop-catching, and bowerbird art : play as the roots of culture -- Memes and dreams : dreaming as playing without a body -- The evolution of play -- Innovative gorillas : the surprising role of play in natural selection -- Playing animal -- Epilogue: Play, life, and everything.

"For readers of Inside of a Dog and The Soul of an Octopus, a fascinating, charming, and revelatory look at the science behind why animals play that shows how life--at its most fundamental level--is playful. In Kingdom of Play, critically acclaimed science writer David Toomey takes us on a fast-paced and entertaining tour of playful animals and the scientists who study them. From octopuses on Australia's Great Barrier Reef to meerkats in the Kalahari Desert to brown bears on Alaska's Aleutian Islands, we follow adventurous researchers as they design and conduct experiments seeking answers to new, intriguing questions: When did play first appear in animals? How does play develop the brain, and how did it evolve? Are the songs and aerial acrobatics of birds the beginning of avian culture? Is fairness in dog play the foundation of canine ethics? And does play direct and possibly accelerate evolution? Monkeys belly-flop, dolphins tail-walk, elephants mud-slide, crows dive-bomb, and octopuses bounce balls. These activities are various, but all are play, and as Toomey explains, animal play can be seen as a distinct behavior--one that is ongoing and open-ended, purposeless and provisional--rather like natural selection. Through a close examination of both natural selection and play, Toomey argues that life itself is fundamentally playful. A globe-spanning journey and a scientific detective story filled with lively animal anecdotes, Kingdom of Play is an illuminating--and yes, playful--look at a little-known aspect of the animal kingdom"--

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