Aside from mating rituals can anyone think of any good examples of animals that actually have some form of play besides the mammals? I have seen desert lizards appear to be playing tag of some sort but I doubt it is true play.
I have seen hundreds of birds flying together as a gigantic vortex. This was on a clear wind-less day, and it looked like a tornado, except it was just birds spiraling around together. I wonder what that was about? It could have been a form of playing.
Thats true, not unusual to see birds of all kinds enjoying wind currents. Crows will occassionaly ride things on a sloped surface, parrots do some behaviors that resemble play as well.
I understand that some birds play. I recall reading about how for a while the Kremlin was having problems with crows that liked to skate down the outside of their “onion dome” roof with their talons. Cutting thin slices through the gold leaf in the process, so it was expensive.
Yup. Hard to explain this as anything other than play:
Thas a good example, it is also pretty advanced in that he has to set up the object he is sliding on. I also just rememebered last week someone posted a video of a group of swans that were actually surfing.
I saw a video of a box turtle and a terrier playing with a ball. On Facebook.
How did they register accounts?
One windy day in late summer I saw a jay bird behaving strangely in the street ahead of me – darting back and forth on the ground beneath an oak tree. As I got closer, I realized the wind was causing acorns to fall from the tree, and as they bounced on the street the jay would chase them and try to catch them. It was clearly play. All the corvids are intelligent birds and spend a lot of time playing. The book Bird brains : the intelligence of crows, ravens, magpies, and jays by Candace Sherk Savage is one of my favorites.
I saw a clip once of wild parrots swinging on abandoned mill wheels.
I did a scuba dive in an area with heavy, heavy current (read: we had to hook ourselves into the reef to stay put). There were a ton of sharks just swimming back and forth just off the edge of the reef, in the heaviest current. Not a normal feeding time for them. We were told, although I can’t confirm, that they just enjoy the current, and were basically playing.
Facebook is full of mysteries.
On Facebook nobody can tell you’re a box turtle; you appear about as smart as the average user.
The terriers stand out for their superior ability to spell.
A researcher was watching a turtle in the National Zoo in D.C. play with a ball, and basically wondered the same thing as the OP. So, he started studying it.
Longer article about the same research:
Possible play behavior in crocodilians:
http://www.herper.com/crocarticles/crocplay.html
My parrot plays, constantly. He sits on his spiral rope and grabs the cage to gain momentum to start swinging. He clearly enjoys this and he’ll do it over and over. He has a ball with a bell it it that is tethered to the top of the cage. He will spend time poking and pulling it to make it ring. He does lots of other stuff which I consider play.
{SLAPS Smeghead Playfully With A Wet Trout}