Fun: A Natural History

Playing and having fun is a widely observed  phenomenon amongst many of Earth's creatures.  Why did it evolve? Why do some creatures play and others do not?  Contributing editor Prego de Nada has looked into this phenomenon and has penned this essay.

Transcript

Fun: A Natural History

 Good day to you, and welcome to Fascinating!  I am your host Rik, from Planet Vulcan.  My ongoing mission on Planet Earth:  to plant seeds of a way of thinking, a way that is based on an understanding of evolutionary processes, with the ultimate aim of helping to sustain and increase the momentum of Earth’s long arc towards prosperous and happy societies, founded on ideals of liberty and justice.

 As I have mentioned on several previous occasions, my Earthling friend, and senior contributing editor, Prego de Nada, is a life-long user of and advocate for cannabis.  In a Season 1 essay titled “Ganja Golf”, Prego described the many benefits of this herb for Earthlings, one of which was the way it stimulates the imagination.

 Well, it’s happened again.  In a recent session of what Prego likes to refer to as “botanical enhancement”, a thought occurred to him, from who knows where, about the nature of playing and fun.

 Here’s Prego’s essay on where his speculation led him.

 Prego writes:

 While recently in a state of botanical enhancement and with my thoughts ramifying, I started wondering about fun. I began questioning why there is such a thing as fun in human experience. Why has it evolved?  What good is it?  Is it just a childish self-indulgence, which you are supposed to put away when you become an adult?

 I remember my father, who loved to play golf, and who would take my brother Stefano and me to play with him.  He refused to admit that he was having fun, though, and justified doing it by saying that he was “getting some exercise”.

 Stefano and I had no such hang-up about having fun, and we continued to pursue fun as adults, making sure the bills were paid and other adult responsibilities were seen to.

 The stoned perspective does several things, one of which is to give you depth perception.  Looking at the same thing through both stoned eyes and straight eyes is analogous to the stereopsis we humans discern due to our evolved binocular vision.

 My first thought was to explore the ideas that scholars have come up with concerning fun, so I queried my chatbot about, first, the ideas of academic sociologists.  

 The bot gave me a reply, and asked whether I also wanted to look at the ideas of psychologists and philosophers about playing and fun, and I of course replied yes.

 Here is a summary of what the bot had to report:

 Sociologists pretty much with one voice have emphasized the socially constructed nature of fun, but without so much as the hint of a nod in the direction of the evolved capacity for fun that we observe in ourselves and in nature, which to me is the most interesting question.  

 Today’s crop of sociologists are more concerned with showing that play activity reflects cultural norms, power relationships and the nature of the economic system within which play takes place.

 It's fair to say that sociologists in general are disciples of the quasi-religious doctrine of Marxianity, so they try to shoehorn everything into the usual framing provided by Marxianity, i.e., class conflict, zero-sum transactions and medievalist notions of intelligent design.

 Sociologists tell us that fun is explained entirely as part of societal norms and cultural expectations.  This sort of explanation is dogma in Marxianity, because it just has to be the case that the minds of humans are blank slates, and we are thus totally malleable, if their plans for conditioning us all are to work out.  

 If we in truth have an evolved capacity for fun, that means that the slate sociologists generally presume to be blank has some non-erasable writing on it, so they studiously avoid acknowledging it.

 And of course much of their time is devoted to looking through their shit-colored glasses. They tell us things like fun is “engineered” and “managed” by some man-behind-the-curtain, and commercialized by (gasp!) capitalists!  And that can’t be good.  

 And, of course, “access” to fun is strongly affected by social inequalities.

 Time to overthrow the capitalist system and put us in charge, they cry!!!  And we promise to use our power only for good!

 By contrast, many psychologists and philosophers who do research and write about fun say things that are more scientifically based than what most sociologists say.

 There is a broad emerging consensus among those who approach the question scientifically, including a few brave heretical sociologists, that behavioral traits in general, like playing for fun, typically stem about half from nature and half from nurture.

 Psychologists note that the play of children serves to develop cooperation, negotiation, empathy and emotional regulation.  Children who are not provided the opportunity to play are generally more aggressive and less creative than children who play.  Play seems to be necessary for healthy brain development in humans.

 Play serves as a low-cost experimentation system in all creatures that play.  They can try things out without suffering the costly consequences of failing at the real thing, such as fighting.  Play is not merely self-indulgent recreation – it is how an intelligent system explores possibility space.

 Creatures having fun is a widely observed phenomenon in the natural world.  Humans of all ages engage in fun-making, as do other primate species, cats, dogs, otters, bears, wolves, seals, dolphins, and many others, including creatures who are only distantly related to humans, such as ravens, parrots, lizards, cichlids (a kind of fish), crocodiles and octopuses.

 We are accustomed to the play of domesticated kittens and puppies, as well the play of the juveniles of other mammal species.  But having fun is more widely distributed than that.

 Ravens, for example, are often observed repeatedly sliding down the slopes of snowy rooftops.  They toss sticks and catch them.  And they fly in loops just for the heck of it and engage in chase-play with other ravens.  Some parrot species engage in similar play behavior.

 Octopuses have been observed playfully manipulating floating objects with jets of water.

 One very interesting thing about birds and octopuses is that they have significantly different neural architecture than mammals.  Bird brains lack the neocortex present in mammalian brains, and octopuses have neurons in their arms as well as their heads.

 Why is fun a thing among so many living creatures?  And did the capacity for play and fun evolve just once, or did it, like eyes, evolve many times?

 It’s conceivable that it might have evolved only once, which would mean that all creatures with this capacity had a common ancestor.  That, however, is extremely unlikely since the latest common ancestor of birds and mammals, a small lizard-like insectivore called an early amniote, lived more than 300 million years ago.

 We call this creature an amniote, because it laid its eggs in an amniotic sac.  This development allowed it to lay its eggs away from water, and thus gave it and its descendants the ability to colonize land.

 We cannot be certain, but such a simple creature probably didn’t play and have fun.

 The amniote lineage split into two lines of creatures, one of which led to mammals, and the other which led to reptiles, dinosaurs and birds.

 And the lineage that led to octopuses, which also play and have fun, diverged from the lineage that led to vertebrates more than 500 million years ago.

 So it stands to reason that playfulness in such diverse species resulted not from a common ancestor, but from parallel evolution.

 Scientists have speculated about why some species play and others don’t.  The commonalities among the ones who play are:

 1)  Relatively large nervous systems.

 2)  Behavioral flexibility.

 3)  Learning-based survival and an extended juvenile learning period.

 The wide distribution of play and fun suggests that play is not simply a quirky trait of one lineage, but rather a general survival strategy of creatures whose brains are capable of exploratory learning.

 We should recognize that the creatures themselves are not acting the way they do because they understand the evolutionary advantages, and thus dutifully engage in play on account of this understanding, any more than an animal engaged in copulation is focusing its attention on creating offspring.

 They are acting the way they do because it appeals to them in the moment, and nature has sculpted the genomes of playing creatures by rewarding individual behavior that turns out well for the species with good feelings.   

 Gorillas just wanna have fun.

 So the next time you are having fun, take a moment to revel in the deep evolutionary roots of this marvelous gift of nature.  And don’t let your fun be spoiled by any voices telling you should not be doing it.

 I invite you to have a listen to the next Fascinating! podcast and a look at the next video on our YouTube channel.  You can find access to all podcasts and videos on our web page, fascinatingpodcast.com.

 Please recommend Fascinating! to your friends if you find the lessons from nature in these essays personally valuable.

 Theme music:  Helium, with thanks to TrackTribe.

 Live long and prosper.

 Practice the art of winning without defeating anyone.

 Savor your experiences.

 Treasure your memories.

 Anticipate a happy and rewarding future.

 And respect nature’s wisdom.