Our four-legged pets are the stars of social networks,
but they're not the only ones to delight the crowds.
Wild animals also enjoy playing around
intentionally or
not watching them.
There's no doubt they take pleasure in these activities
contrary to what has long been thought.
Could it be that pleasure isn't only
reserved for human beings?
It has long been known that play is a way of learning
for young animals, but is that all there is to it?
Evidently they enjoy playing.
And what about sexual pleasure?
Up until recently, it was believed
that animals only performed the act for reproduction.
Is that still true? Whatever the case, you have to know how
to choose the right partner.
Is it the search for pleasure
that also pushes certain animals to get drunk
or to eagerly eat psychotropic substances?
To get high
play is the privilege of young animals that are fed
and protected by their parents.
They don't have to worry about feeding themselves
reproducing or escaping from predators.
They've got time and they spend it playing.
They gain several advantages from this
beyond the obvious pleasure they find in play.
Observation also reveals that gains innocently prepare them
for their adult lives.
Sergio Palace is a neuroscientist at the Lethbridge
University in Canada
who is especially interested in animal games.
Play is a very enjoyable activity.
It activates all the pleasure centers of the brain,
and so animals do it at a sheer pleasure,
but by engaging in something for the sheer pleasure
of it also brings important benefits.
The animal is also training its brain how to deal
with the unexpected things in the world.
If you are a predator, you can be better at predation.
If you get into a fight, you can be better at fighting.
If you are trying to court someone,
you're better at love making everything improves through
these experiences of play.
Make no mistake in the wild,
it doesn't take much to have some fun.
And this is what you call sticking your tongue out.
The favorite game of young animals is play fighting
just for the fun of it.
Rats love to play
and the way they play is by wrestling with one another.
And the wrestl involves one rat jumping on the other one
and try to contact the back of the neck
and the other rat will defend itself, turn
and push this one away or roll over on its back
and then they're wrestling like this
and they're both trying to get at each other's back
of the neck or it can turn and run away
and they will repeat this again and again and again.
Play especially play fighting has been shown
to be important in young animals
to train
and change the development of this area
of the brain here called the prefrontal cortex.
And so animals that have played have
much better executive functions
based on changes in the prefrontal cortex.
And this could be absolutely critical for survival
because sometimes the best thing to do
when you encounter a problem is do nothing
hence impulse control.
Sometimes you need to react immediately.
You haven't got time to think. And again, this part
of the brain helps you decide whether to act immediately
or wait and gain some more information before you act.
The prefrontal cortex is the home of reasoning language
and the regulation of emotions.
The executive functions.
It is also the place of self recognition
In a well-known test,
a subject has a distinctive mark placed on their face
and is put in front of a mirror.
Some animals obviously recognize it's their own reflection
and seem proud to be so pretty in the mirror.
Others don't really know who is in front of them,
but enjoy the experience.
One way to show the importance of play is to see
what happens when animals are deprived of it.
You can rear them in a way that they do not get experience
with playing with peers.
And when you track them
and look at their behavior as adults, what you find is that
they're less able to effectively
negotiate sexual encounters
with members of the opposite sex.
They're less able to avoid getting into aggressive
encounters with members of the same sex that is this.
They're socially poorer animals.
And similarly, if you look at the prefrontal cortex,
the prefrontal cortex has abnormal anatomy
and physiology compared to rats
that have played on the screen.
We see two cells from this area in two rats, one
that's played and one that hasn't played on the left here,
the one that hasn't played.
You see a lot of complexity in the one
that has played on the right here.
You see much less complexity.
The simplest structure
of this cell makes it more efficient in its functions.
This isn't the only advantage of play.
Animal handlers in wildlife parks
and certain industrial farms have often noticed
that captive animals play more than their wild cousins.
Since they are fed
and lodged, they have time to do other things.
But is that the only reason?
The play releases all the pleasure chemicals in your brain
and those pleasure chemicals end up calming you down.
And so bringing that stress level down,
so even brief moments of play
can be an antidote to stress.
Playing with balls
and balloons isn't just reserved for mammals.
Fly duos can also perform amazing acts.
As for flea circuses, every shot is a goal.
Bumblebees are also in the game.
The recent work of Sam Gal PAYE
Ethologist at the Queen Mary University of London reveals
that if well-trained, they're on the ball. Finding
That bumblebees engage in this behavior
that fulfills the criteria of play tells us that
because in other animals play is associated to
positive emotions and fun, then in bumblebees it's likely
that they also experience a positive um, state.
Sam Gpe isn't simply training the bees to play football.
She's exploring their mental universe.
Here's a bumblebee nest connected
to the experimental arena through a tunnel
so the bees can walk through and come
and drink some sugar water
and eat pollen as much as they want.
On the way to the feeders, there's this games area
where the bees roll the balls repeatedly
and they don't get any food reward for doing this.
There doesn't seem to be an apparent reason to do so.
So they do this just for fun.
Bumblebees have the reputation of being tireless workers,
but they certainly do seem to enjoy pushing a ball around
and perhaps even doing somersaults.
Sam created an experiment that confirms this in the wild,
it is acknowledged that bees clearly prefer
blue and violet flowers.
The scientists set up two areas, an empty blue zone
and a yellow one filled with tiny balls,
which the bees had already played with
in her test.
Samie removed all the balls, then opened the door
to both zones despite their attraction for the color blue,
all the bees went to the yellow zone.
The possibility of play is motivating.
Samie also observed
that younger bees rolled the balls more
often than the older ones.
As in humans and other mammals,
the young are more playful than adults.
This kind of behavior, even if basic, some kind
of emotion like experiences just like your pets,
me, you and many other larger animals
In little animals playing around is less common.
There are two other examples of
play behavior in tiny brain animals in wasps and spiders.
Both of those examples are to do with social play
where one individual interacts with another with wasps.
The social play was more similar to play fighting
and with the spiders, um, they engaged in, uh,
copulation before the act was functional
and so it was a sort of sex play.
Few insects seem to have game-like fun.
What about reptiles?
Of course they play too,
but their games are limited
by their cold-blooded metabolism, which compels them
to reserve most of their energy for hunting.
Gordon Burkhart ologist at the University
of Tennessee in the United States is an expert
in reptile play.
Hey girl, He has studied
and filmed them over many years.
Now she's gonna go back and
maybe grab something outta my pocket.
That's what they like to do.
Gordon has identified play behavior in the
world's largest lizards.
The impressive Komodo dragons
Sometimes play is uh, confused with exploration.
One of the uh, ways of telling the difference is
that exploration, you just checking out something,
what you do with it is now play.
Hey girl.
Hey, Here's
A box,
Ma, she goes, rep reptiles operate a little slower pace
than we do, but she has all the important elements.
This is behavior that, uh, is part
of their normal repertoire.
She'll do this over and over again.
It's a behavior in an animal
that we consider in a relaxed state.
It's a behavior that's voluntary.
Another confusion may be, well,
maybe the animal is stupid enough and thinks it's food
and it's acting as if it's prey.
That is clearly not the case either
because the animal doesn't try to eat the object.
Bye girl.
Understanding behavior in animals
that hardly resemble us is complicated,
but what about those that live underwater,
immersed and grouped together in a candle like position?
These sperm whales are sleeping.
These huge animals also spend a lot of their time playing.
Francois Serrano is a renowned oceanographer,
a key specialist of sperm whales
in the Indian Ocean off the coast of the Mauritius Islands.
Francois has been following
and studying a clan of these citations for over 10 years.
Said they are the ones that welcome us.
They accept that we spend a few moments together.
There are two reasons for that.
The first is the end of hunting 30 years ago
and today they've forgotten the great massacre
and the young are oblivious to this, so they are ready
to come closer to humans.
And the second reason, we've been extremely patient,
discreet, and humble to become step by step
sperm whales among sperm whales
Over the many dives with the clan, Francois
and his team have identified the
key features of each member.
The scars, the form of a jaw marks on the fins
today they can identify each individual at a glance.
So they named this large adult female whose face is clearly
offset to the right Irene twisted face.
Irene is the Klan's leader, a group of 17 adult females
and nine juveniles.
The solitary males live elsewhere.
They only approach the females during the mating season.
Fois has found that some of the clicks made
by Irene twisted face are not simply
to explore the environment but are invitations to play
on her side.
German watches over two juveniles,
kind of like a nanny.
She can be recognized by her damaged left chest. Fin
German is the babysitter who looks after the nursery
and allows the young to play.
They're safe. They've been fed
well breast fed, so they've got time.
They're looking to feel good in the present moment.
We have to stop looking
for some benefit in all these cuddles, these games.
This is just for pleasure.
At times we hear purring clicks
and these vibrations which we can hear
as divers hear in the chest.
Well they too can feel these purring.
It's like being stroked.
I think there's a tactile perception
to these special sounds which are released during play.
Underwater games performed
by marine mammals have behaviors close to those
of land mammals, affectionate
little bites,
acrobatic leaps and stunts.
The most famous are no doubt the aerial gymnastics
of spinner dolphins.
They can perform seven complete rotations in a
single spinning jump.
Our best world class ice skaters can do a maximum of four
in certain bays.
Larger groups have been seen patrolling the waters.
They cut through the waves with impressive regularity
and impressive discipline, giving them the appearance
of a military parade with freestyle acrobats.
The dolphins also play up blowing air bubbles
through their blow holes
and splashing them around with their beaks.
They can also bite them with a clack of their jaws just
before the bubbles burst.
Manta rays tend to swim above divers
and play with the bursts of bubbles released
by their breathing gear.
Speaking of bubbles, researchers are convinced the bubbles
made by beluga whales is a way of expressing their feelings,
but can also be just playing around
the fascinating rings they create with their mouths
and blow holes look just like the swirly smoke rings
produced by creative smokers.
We still don't know why dolphins
and citations slap repeatedly the surface
of the ocean with their tails.
It could be a call or the display of a need
just for the simple pleasure of making some noise.
Not everyone is alike when it comes to play.
fsis Serrano notices very different personalities in sperm
whales characterized by specific ways of approaching play.
Romeo who has been well looked
after by his mother, is the most playful.
When there's a stick or a tree trunk,
he starts to play with it.
Then lets it go to play with seaweed
and then he brings it back to his babysitter.
So he uses a lot of tools to play with.
However, Elliot, the Explorer, is interested by everything
but the world of the sperm whales.
It's the outside world. He comes towards the divers.
There we were just the two of us.
He danced, turned on his back, offered his belly,
and a few seconds later
he used this sound of eight clicks 40 times in a row
to ask me for cuddles.
Francois recorded the clicks linked to different behaviors
of sperm whales and created a graphic illustration.
The oceanographer often invites the marine mammals
he approaches to play.
This wild female dolphin replies willingly to his invitation
and asks him to play.
In turn,
when he scratches a rock with a crab shell,
she analyzes the sound with her echolocation system,
which functions a little like an ultrasound scan.
She deduces the shape, texture, internal structure
and movement of the object
in a way through echolocation,
she can see in touch with her ears.
In reply, she produces very intense bursts of sound,
which means she wants to play.
It's just incredible to be asked to play
by a wild dolphin.
She calls out to you, it's wild. She looks here and there
She Goes around and comes back.
I hold her out the claw.
No, she doesn't want it, and off she goes again
and all the time
then her eye looks straight at you.
It's extraordinary.
For a dolphin, everything is a reason to play.
Drifting seaweed becomes a scarf which the dolphin
wraps about itself.
With amazing skill,
a jellyfish becomes a ball pushed with the snout
or kicked off with a sweep of the tail.
A small globe fish all swollen up
because it's scared to death becomes a ping pong ball
at Shark Bay.
In Australia, dolphins often play with sea sponges.
They have discovered how to use them to protect the end
of their snouts when they seek out prey.
In the coral.
The dolphin who was playing around
with sponges must have used the sponge by accident.
He saw a fish hiding in the coral dived
after it with a sponge on the nose
and caught the fish without cutting his nose.
The game became a tour, an innovation,
and this was passed on throughout the group.
That transmission means it became a culture more
so this approach will probably be the source of speciation
because this group of sponge dolphins little
by little moves away from the original group of dolphins.
It was part of
Many forms of behavior are passed down from generation
to generation in animals and this forms a culture.
This is true in the case of pleasure of taste.
It is well known that monkeys use stones to break the shells
of fruit and long grass or twigs to catch and eat termites.
Some clans of maca monkeys in Japan soak sweet potatoes in
sea water before eating them
and it has long been asked why they do this.
According to Ethologists, it is probably a lucky discovery
by playing around or by accident,
the sweet potatoes fell into the sea water
and the Maccas found they had a delightfully salty taste.
This became common usage
and like others was passed down from
generation to generation.
Jean Battis Le and Noel Gust Ethologists at the University
of Lethbridge in Canada are studying the cultural
transmission of games in long tailed Balinese
and Japanese macaques.
This is an example of a long tailed maca in Bali,
engaging in what we call stone pounding behavior.
This is kind of reminiscent of
what chimpanzees do when they use stones as hammers
to crack open hard shell nuts.
But this is not what's going on here.
Here the monkey treated the stone almost as a toy.
The monkey is playing with the stone.
As you can tell, the monkey is repeatedly pounding the stone
on the ground for apparently no purpose at all.
Perhaps just for the fun of it.
Among the different stone directed actions,
a monkey can clack two stones together.
Another monkey may rub vigorously a stone on the ground.
Another monkey may swipe two stones together.
We've also seen a monkey throwing stones up in the air.
A heat sensing camera measures the skin
temperature of the Maccas.
Knowing the temperature of the tip
of their noses gives an indication as to their mood.
Jean Batiste is checking if the playing monkeys have a
colder nose and a more relaxed facial expression than those
who don't want to play.
Even though Maccas are widespread in Asia,
there are different ways of playing games like blind men's
birth peekaboo
or playing with stones are exclusive to certain communities.
In Bali only the long tailed Maccas
of the sacred forest at the center
of the island play with stones.
This characteristic is associated
to the many offerings which are given
to the apes of this forest.
When humans give food to the monkeys,
they also give them more free time.
What are the monkeys gonna do with this extra free time?
Well, they might keep their hands moving and
and one way to keep your hands moving when you have more
free time is to possibly invent this form of object play.
Stone play
In southern Thailand, a community
of Maccas play it making sounds with stones
and anything else at hand that creates a sound.
That's an example of uh, the the Jack Stone game,
the equivalent of the Jack Stone game.
This monkey could do that for 20 minutes in a row,
picking up those gravel, light, tiny stones
and dropping them on the ground.
Monkeys are not the only ones playing this kind of game.
Many species of otter also play with stones.
In playing with pebbles,
they reproduce the actions they make
to extract meat from shellfish.
This juggling frenzy is catchy When one of the otters starts
to play around all the others join in.
The same behavior can be seen in grooming sessions
of primates in specific species.
Play has a social purpose.
It brings pleasure and helps unite the group.
Ethologist Noah Gust is studying another game played
by long tailed Balinese
Mac forage on coconut.
And while eating the flesh like this,
they hide their eyes and face with the empty coconut shell.
The game consists of walking around blindfolded for
as long as possible.
It's a form of peekaboo play like for children.
In a social context, we noticed that uh, this form
of peek play can attract the attention of other monkeys,
which in the end can trigger social play
between those monkeys.
These monkeys can use a variety
of objects like plastic bag trash
or closing material to cover their eyes
and faces while walking around.
These monkeys by playing blind, put themself in a risky
situation, which is similar to
what Australian macies for instance, do.
By playing upside down,
The pleasure of the game is greater than the risk
of getting hurt
in Bali.
Whatever the age or gender of the apes,
there is only one community
that plays constantly at peekaboo or the stone game.
We observe this peekaboo lay behavior on daily basis
in this population of Mac, whereas in other population of
Maca, we only observed this behavior occasionally.
For example, it has never been observed within
the neighboring community.
At the northwest of the island, territorial anchoring
of cultural traits is also found in another source
of pleasure, frequently sought by animals.
Sexuality,
That is a male monkey using a stone to m********e.
This is another male monkey using a big stone to m********e.
And this is a female monkey using several
stones to m********e.
What is really interesting
with the stone tapping behavior is that it
probably emerged from the cultural practice of stone play.
It's almost like this specific group
of monkeys have been doing stone play for generations,
and at some 0.1 individual invented the use
of stones as sex toys and maybe
because the behavior is pleasurable,
it's spread within the group.
Other primates use plastic bottlenecks as sex toys.
The search for pleasure throws a new light on animal
sexuality, which was until today assumed to be only
for reproduction.
Do animals copulate just for the survival of the species
offer pleasure between the herma of earthworms,
the homosexual bonds of lions and the sea.
Breams transsexuality born male
and turn female at around the age of three.
The animal world holds a wide range
of different sexualities.
Some species copulate without penetration.
Others go straight to the point.
Occasionally the female is better gifted than the male like
the hyena with a clitoris as big as a penis.
What we call heterosexuality is only
one option amongst many.
The masturbation of baboons
and maccas, the sexual inconstancy of dolphins,
the erotic frenzy of bears clearly reveal
that animal sexuality isn't dominated by the need
to procreate, but by the search for pleasure.
Professor thi Lodi has long studied ative ecology
and his conclusions are bewildering
Sexuality. Not
only is sexuality not designed for reproduction,
but it is totally different from reproduction.
If Something had been invented for reproduction,
surely it would not have been so complicated as random
and expensive as sexuality.
One of the great advantages of sexuality is
that it releases waves of sensations, which little by little
as animal species evolve.
Invents pleasure.
A whole group of substances in the nervous system leads to
that incredible sensation of pleasure that we see.
We find this from tiny fruit flies, troph files
that are capable of having gratifying ejaculations
in the first fish, the amphibians,
and then it becomes explosive in other species.
For example, birds who have extraordinary orgasms
and even turtles who have been seen enjoying
very long orgasms.
And then of course in mammals there can be very quick
populations that are often repeated
because that's what at stake.
The impulse towards pleasure which sexuality generates is
obviously to continually repeat those activities
In our human culture and western society.
Monogamy is the general rule,
but contrary to what is often believed,
monogamy is the exception in the animal kingdom.
In nature, monogamous species are restricted species
restricted by their environment, restricted
by conditions of life.
Think of penguins such as the emperor,
which doesn't deprive itself
of homosexuality while remaining faithful
to its partner for very long.
And what about the gender of the partner?
Homosexuality is frequent in most species of animal
because put simply sexuality is frequent.
Such species are more or less fundamentally bisexual
and will develop short
or long term homosexual relationships, especially in monkeys
possibly because they've been the most studied,
seen occasionally in rams and hoofed mammals,
homosexual relationships have been seen in lions.
It has been well-studied in groups
of males that often stay together.
Sex parties have been observed among lions,
especially in South Africa,
but it's also been seen elsewhere
in some species.
Unleashed activities are associated with play
for no other reason than the search for pleasure.
According to thi ludi, it's sexual
pleasure rather than the Darwinian biological logic
of procreation, which pushes the reproductive dynamic in
most animal species
and likely determines their relationship to others.
But how can we know if animals feel pleasure?
The study of vaginal spasms, of a**l tractions, et cetera,
will step by step prove
that the same organic elements occur.
Orgasmic facial expressions that are
so common in the animal kingdom.
All these elements help us understand
that if there is no orgasms similar to
that found in human beings, it is very close.
Homo sapiens does not have the monopoly of sexual
pleasure, whatever its form and whoever the partner may be.
Ethologist Noel Gust at the University
of Lethbridge studies an even more surprising subject,
interspecies sex interactions between seeker deer
of Mino in the center of Japan
with the local Maccas are the center of her attention.
This is a female sitting on the back of a deer
and uh, it's rubbing
its genitals onto the back of the deer.
This is a sexual mount
and the female is probably, uh, experiencing sexual pleasure
out of this genital stimulation.
This somewhat unorthodox custom does not concern just a
few isolated individuals.
It seems as though it is a common trait
amongst the young females.
The young female Japanese Maca don't use the deer
just like a sex toy.
They actually solicit the deer like a regular
sexual partner like they would do with a male monkey
during the mating season.
They solicit the deer, they emit lots
of sexual vocalization.
They defend their dear partner as they would do
with a male monkey.
Adolescent female. Maccas also mate regularly
with the males of their community.
But Noah Gust observed that they prefer to take pleasure
with the deer rather than the males of their own species.
This preference could be due to the aggressive attitude
of male maccas during intercourse.
The ologist has another possible reason.
Mounting deer for this young, uh, female
monkeys is probably a way for them to practice
the sexual months, which will prepare them
for their future sexual life.
For her, these interspecies relationships are a way
of experimenting, avoiding bites and other brutalities.
What could be in it for the deer?
What interest can they find in these
outlandish monkey rodeos?
Observation has shown that
after having rubbed their genitals against the deer's back,
the maccas often clean their partner's neck.
In this way, the deer seems to get a free session
of grooming
on the Japanese island of Yakima.
Other researchers recently filmed a scene of masturbation.
This time it is a male maca on a female deer.
When other males approach his partner, he chases them off
as if he demanded exclusive rights to the dear
that was bringing him pleasure.
There is a wide diversity of relationships between animals.
The behavior that we call homosexual
or bisexual is common incitation from dolphins
to sperm whales, the oceanographer Francois
Serrano discovered an astounding synchronization of cliques
between two females rubbing against one another.
Del Delphine, who is below here
and whose cliques are symbolized by this white bar,
has just called Vanessa and asked for a correct.
If Vanessa rep applies and she does the two come together
and caress vaginal cleft against vaginal cleft
or vaginal cleft against back fin.
This is an undeniable sexual act
and we've analyzed over 1,700 of these relations and coder
and we've shown that it belonged not only to this kind
of behavior, but to the clan within which
these females live.
These couples are relatively stable.
For example, Vanessa will go with Caroline,
but never with Irene twisted face, who is the matriarch.
Whereas Irene twisted face will go with Claire,
who will never go with Vanessa or Caroline.
When the mating season approaches when the
female is fertile.
These varied forms of sexuality seem to come to an end.
The game of Libertinism is over.
One must appear sensual, thoughtful, and engaged.
Should a rival try
and get in the way of the game, they won't hesitate
to fight sex.
Your pleasure is far more than a pleasant
outcome of evolution.
Recent studies show that it's the driving force
behind reproduction.
The search for pleasure is the foundation
for the survival of the species.
Why are these animals behaving in such an unusual way?
Shawa who think they're weightless
mag pies stumble and cannot fly.
Squirrels falling over backwards.
There is no doubt that they have eaten
psychotropic substances.
These natural drugs bring about the release
of dopamine in the animal's bodies.
A molecule associated
with pleasure also released during play.
In spring RO deer
and sham white graze on birds
which ferment in the animal's stomach.
This produces alcohol and gets them drunk.
Other animals deliberately get drunk
by eating overwrite fruit.
Cats get high by eating certain herbs, CATME
or valerian root plants.
When fine weather arrives,
reindeer a door eating the emerging flyer, Garrick mushroom,
which sends them into a state of Stu.
Elephants seem to delight in eating marula fruit,
which ferments on the ground.
Like other animals, they don't have the enzyme,
which lets them efficiently digest the alcohol
and they rapidly get drunk.
Elephants, birds, and monkeys all delight in the
roots of iboga.
This is a hallucinogenic plant central
to a shamanic ritual performed by the bewi indigenous tribes
of Gabon and Congo.
Many observations suggest
that animals deliberately seek psychoactive results,
which bring them pleasure
and perhaps even help them see pink elephants
long considered as a villain act
of humans lacking moral ground.
Today's scientific studies tend to endorse the idea
that the search for pleasure is common to many animals.
It helps reduce stress, improve animal performance
and social relations, favorize biodiversity
and is a powerful drive-through evolution.
We may like to think we are superior beings,
but our biology confirms we are animals.
We can now finally grasp the importance
of pleasure in our own lives.
Hey, One last thing.
Did you know that a sign that IT study says
that watching a wildlife documentary brings pleasure?
It does, and it's an excellent stress reliever.
I'm an animal, so will you.