Rough-and-tumble play (RT) is a widespread phenomenon in mammals. Since it involves competition, whereby one animal attempts to gain advantage over another, RT runs the risk of escalation to serious fighting. Competition is typically curtailed by some degree of cooperation and different signals help negotiate potential mishaps during RT. This review provides a framework for such signals, showing that they range along two dimensions: one from signals borrowed from other functional contexts to those that are unique to play, and the other from purely emotional expressions to highly cognitive (intentional) constructions. Some animal taxa have exaggerated the emotional and cognitive interplay aspects of play signals, yielding admixtures of communication that have led to complex forms of RT. This complexity has been further exaggerated in some lineages by the development of specific novel gestures that can be used to negotiate playful mood and entice reluctant partners. Play-derived gestures may provide new mechanisms by which more sophisticated communication forms can evolve. Therefore, RT and playful communication provide a window into the study of social cognition, emotional regulation and the evolution of communication systems.
Emotional contagion is a basic form of empathy that makes individuals able to experience others’ emotions. In human and non-human primates, emotional contagion can be linked to facial mimicry, an automatic and fast response (less than 1 s) in which individuals involuntary mimic others’ expressions. Here, we tested whether body (play bow, PBOW) and facial (relaxed open-mouth, ROM) rapid mimicry is present in domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) during dyadic intraspecific play. During their free playful interactions, dogs showed a stronger and rapid mimicry response (less than 1 s) after perceiving PBOW and ROM (two signals typical of play in dogs) than after perceiving JUMP and BITE (two play patterns resembling PBOW and ROM in motor performance). Playful sessions punctuated by rapid mimicry lasted longer that those sessions punctuated only by signals. Moreover, the distribution of rapid mimicry was strongly affected by the familiarity linking the subjects involved: the stronger the social bonding, the higher the level of rapid mimicry. In conclusion, our results demonstrate the presence of rapid mimicry in dogs, the involvement of mimicry in sharing playful motivation and the social modulation of the phenomenon. All these findings concur in supporting the idea that a possible linkage between rapid mimicry and emotional contagion (a building-block of empathy) exists in dogs.
Social animals gain benefits from cooperative behaviours. However, social systems also imply competition and conflict of interest. To cope with dispersal forces, group‐living animals use several peace‐keeping tactics, which have been deeply investigated in primates. Other taxa, however, have been often neglected in this field research. Wolves (Canis lupus) with their high sociality and cooperative behaviour may be a good model species to investigate the reconciliation process. In this study, we provide the first evidence for the occurrence of reconciliation in a group of zoo‐kept wolves. The conciliatory contacts were uniformly distributed across the different sex‐class combinations. We found a linear dominance hierarchy in the colony under study, although the hierarchical relationships did not seem to affect the reconciliation dynamics. Moreover, both aggressors and victims initiated first post‐conflict affinitive contact with comparable rates and both high‐ and low‐intensity conflicts were reconciled with similar percentages. Finally, we found that coalitionary support may be a good predictor for high level of conciliatory contacts in this species.
Evidence for the anticipation of competition at feeding time has been previously documented in both Pan species. Chimpanzees seem to cope with competitive tendency through behavioural mechanisms of tension reduction, and grooming is certainly one of these. Social play and grooming are often matched because they bring animals into close physical contact for long periods, and they have an important role in social cohesion. Our goal was to investigate the occurrence of play behaviour during the pre-feeding period, before a basic maintenance activity is about to take place, in the chimpanzee colony housed in the ZooParc de Beauval (St Aignan sur Cher, France). The group was composed of 10 adults and nine immature individuals. By scan animal sampling (344 h of observation), we recorded play and grooming interactions in all age-class combinations during four different periods (pre-feeding, feeding, post-feeding, control). We found peak levels of grooming interactions among adults during the pre-feeding time. A peak frequency at the pre-feeding time was also found in social play between adults and unrelated immature subjects. This finding suggests that during high tension periods, grooming and play might share similar functions in conflict management. Like grooming, play might have an important role to limit aggression and increase tolerance around food (immediate benefits). Immature animals showed a higher frequency of play in the pre-feeding than in any other condition (feeding, post-feeding, and control). During high excitement periods social play probably represents a safe mechanism for immature subjects to test their personal abilities (self-assessment), the strength/weakness of playmates, and the degree of cooperation/competition with them (social-assessment). In the light of this new evidence, we can assert that play behaviour is far from being a purposeless activity, at least in the chimpanzee colony under study.Correspondence: E. Palagi,
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