Rough‐and‐tumble play as a window on animal communication

Abstract

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.

Effects of prenatal exposure to valproic acid on the development of juvenile-typical social play in rats

“…Given the complex cognitive, emotional, and communicative demands on animals during social play (Graham and Burghardt, 2010;Pellis et al, 2010;Palagi et al, 2015), the present study provides a detailed analysis of the social play of rats exposed to VPA as fetuses. It was predicted that the previously reported decreases in social play (Schneider and Przewlocki, 2005;Chomiak et al, 2010) should be correlated with a reduction in contact-promoting maneuvers during the play and also a reduction of playassociated USVs in the 50 kHz range.…”

“…Play fighting is an affiliative form of behavior that involves many neural systems for its execution and regulation (Vanderschuren et al, 1997;Siviy and Panksepp, 2011), and involves complex patterns of interanimal coordination and communication (Palagi et al, 2015). That is, play fighting involves the kinds of social abilities considered to be compromised in autism.…”

“…Holloway, 1984a, 1984b;Reinhart et al, 2004). Moreover, irrespective of the possible sex differences in some aspects of play, for playful interactions to remain playful, all rats have to be able to interpret social cues appropriately (Pellis et al, 2010;Palagi et al, 2015). Therefore, it is likely that both sexes would be affected to some degree by treatments that produce autism-like conditions -as does in-utero VPA exposure.…”

Social play as joint action: A framework to study the evolution of shared intentionality as an interactional achievement

“…Coordinating these phases relies on (Palagi, 2006;Palagi et al, 2015;Pellis & Pellis, 1996) and not as means to coordinate joint action. Second, the literature often only analyzes single phases of the bout and not the entire sequence as a potential achievement of shared intentionality.…”

Complexity of mutual communication in animals exemplified by paired dances in the red-crowned crane

“…It is necessary to develop new methods for analysing temporal association, among performers of mutual communication (Takeda 2016). The development of methodologies will help to quantify paired dances, as well as other behaviours, like play (Palagi et al 2016) or group displays of three or more individuals (Perrot et al 2016), that involve similar structures.…”