Play

I came downstairs yesterday morning and looked out the window, to see a doe and two fawns grazing on my lawn. Evidently they were finding something worth eating among the crabgrass. But the fawns weren ' t all that interested in breakfast. They ' d nibble a bit then gambol -- i.e. jump around -- singly or together. They ' d nuzzle the mother briefly, and she might nuzzle them back. At one point they both suddenly ran off into the woods. She just waited patiently until they came running back. They seemed to be testing or teasing her. Of course at some point she ' s going to have to let them go, but not yet. What I find curious about this is that the fawns couldn ' t possibly have been getting more calories from the occasional nibble at my lawn than they were spending running around and playing. It turns out that all young mammals play. They wrestle, race each other, pretend to hunt a blowing leaf or an insect. (Or, if they live with humans, a toy we give them.) Humans with their complex societies and imaginations engage in more complex play, inventing stories and situations and characters, but as the song goes, even the deer and the antelope play in their own way.This takes up a lot of energy, and food isn ' t always in surplus, although it is right now for our deer population in the middle of a long, rainy summer. So any good biologist has to ask why evolution would favor such apparently wasteful behavior. The answer seems to be that mammals, with their complicated brain...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs