This morning, I reminiscing about childhood games. And how mammals and birds at the least if not all animals have their own forms of childhood games. Before I go any farther, I'm going to send some references your way [swings both hands with point index fingers in your direction].
A quick googling of "animal play"0 indicates that it is very difficult to definei, however there is agreement that it gets you ready for the big bad world in almost all ways.ii
So, then. What is the purpose of games like:
red-light/green-light ["i'm going to get really good at sneaking up behind people before they turn to face me and then scaringiii/killing them"]
Lion's Cub ["Watch how I stealthily take the one thing you care about"]
I'll tell you what the purpose is. Ninjas. No wait. Even better. Liam Neeson in Taken (54s in)
I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.
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0 Be careful what links you click on when you put that into Google.
i"No behavior has proved more ill-defined, elusive, controversial and even unfashionable than play" Wilson, E. O. (1975) Sociobiology: The New Synthesis Cambridge, M.A. Harvard University Press. By way of the Wikipidea article
ii"When individuals play they typically use action patterns that are also used in other contexts, such as predatory behaviour, antipredatory behaviour, and mating." pp83- It is an interesting review. A sub-species of wallaby have been shown to take it easy on younger partners (bottom of pp 84) There is another interesting anecodote in it about coyote cubs and no one wanting to play with the cheaters (top of pp85). And [the last one. I promise] - cranial electrodes measured that primates have an area in their brain that lights up when they do something or when they watch someone do the same thing. It has the titular name: "mirror neurons".*
iiiI'm all for the idea of scaring people... in fact it is that time of year again. This year, I'm going all out nerd. I'm even going as far as to do up before and after sketches of the thing I am going as and giving it a back story. That will appear... here exclusively!**
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*The observations regarding "mirror neurons" reminded me that babies learn to smile from watching us smiling, which prompted some googling... Eric Jaffe quotes that some consider their discovery on a level with "DNA in the realm of scientific discovery". It is an accessible review of the subject... as he says: "technical enough to impress at dinner parties; simple enough to explain to Grandma; sweeter sounding than, say, the Bose-Einstein condensate"***
**I was the first person I went to and I could not refuse my offer. I really got screw/came out on top with this deal.
***FYI- if you see me at a dinner party, you better not use mirror neurons or so help me, you'll learn to wince at others' pain if you don't already :)****
****That one is wheels within wheels, baby
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