I guess I always end the work week with a cute animal video. That’s for me, as I need it. Here’s a good one from the Toronto Zoo via VetSTREET, showing what they describe as “bear bogganing”. The scientific name of the giant panda is Ailuropoda melanoleuca, which I translate as “black and white cat-footed animal.” There’s not much felinity in this lumbering beast, though.
As heavy, wet snow began to come down Monday morning, security cameras caught the 6-year-old giant panda romping, playing and sliding down hills in the white stuff. He made a snack out of it, too. The bear, who arrived at the zoo with his partner, Er Shun, in March 2013, showed his love for snow last winter, too. The zoo has dubbed his antics “bear-bogganing.”
Perhaps this isn’t play, but just a bear that can’t keep its footing. Whaddya think?
h/t: Diane G
His movements are very feline — Photoshop Baihu’s face on his and replace the snow with a bedspread and he’d be a dead ringer.
b&
Play.
Definitely playing.
Obviously play. This bear loves snow.
Concur.
I know that bears are related to d*gs and one of mine took a look at her first snowfall and immediately jumped in and began to romp. Within seconds she figured out how to run at it and flip onto her back so that she could surf it.
I’ve had people tell me that humans invented fun. Right.
Kinda makes me want to go roll down a snowy hill, too. 🙂 It’s been decades…
At my age, that’s called “had an accident.”
LOL, so true. 😀
It’s interesting to watch this video and imagine that he is not playing, just falling. Since it’s possible, I wonder how much I’m unconsciously anthropomorphising the panda when I’m sorely tempted to say “play.”
In fact, it’s also possible to watch the video and imagine that the panda is not just falling, but expressing frustration. If so, it must be even more frustrating for him to hear people laughing and going ‘aw, how cute’ and ‘look at the FUN he’s having!”
That is, it would add to his annoyance once we anthropomorphise him.
I’m seeing intentional somersaulting, which doesn’t see fall-like to me. And IIRC, pandas’ natural environments can be pretty snowy, so they’re probably used to it.
As you’re well aware, your characterizing him as “frustrate[ed]” and “annoy[ed]” is anthropomorphism, too. I don’t think we can avoid it! 😀 Although I’m sure there’s an ethologist somewhere who could claim to be completely disinterested…Gets back to our old discussion (our = Weit-ians in general, not just you & me) about whether the classic null hypothesis should be tabula rasa or something like ‘expected to act like other sentient animals have been known to act.’
My, I’m feeling wonky today.
It’s not anthropomorphizing to theriomorphize humans.
Thing is, he always “recovers” control well in advance of running into the wall at the bottom of the hill. And he has no trouble whatsoever climbing back up to a prime spot for spontaneously diving a shoulder and “uncontrollably” rolling back down again.
b&
I think you’re right, but try to imagine a cranky voiceover explaining those moments:
“God damn it, let me try again, same place, get it right this time. So far so ….nooooooo. God damn it!” (Kicks at snow with paws repeatedly and falls again, swearing under breath.)
I think the panda is a “she”, cause her partner’s name is “er shun” (二顺), which is a quite country & rustic boy name.
Professor you made me laugh….
Hmmm… A six year old acting like a 5 year old. Isn’t “having fun” an indicator of higher levels of consciousness? Weird.
The panda is clearly enjoying the snow. Look at the expression on his/her face! The tumbling is clearly on purpose too! I say it is play.
Totally playing. And anyone who says otherwise has no soul… 😛
Given how much pandas seem to love slides (see other v cute YouTube clips) I’m sure the panda’s enjoying itself.
I think giant pandas are wonderful and well worth saving- I don’t care what Chris Packham says.
I think it’s gorgeous and it looks like play to me. Thanks Jerry and Diane 🙂
He’s deliberately somersaulting! No way this isn’t play.
It sure looks like she’s having a blast. That’s probably the fastest she’ll ever move too, which must be quite a delight for her.
This video has gone viral…love it. Not that consensus makes reality, but the viral aspect of this Panda antic indeed points to a general consensus that “play” is at play. My d*gs love the snow when it appears. Their attitude changes. They get a little timid of it at first, but once in the midst they run and jump and can’t get enough of the snow, and the deeper the better. I think biologists could have a serious discussion of how snow affects animals that aren’t exposed to it often and how they react with a sense of play- also known as FUN.
Yep–d*gs and kids; very similar animals when it comes to snow.
Cats,too. Smokey is much more energized and playful outside if it is cold.
Ok, so I get Jimmy Ruffin’s ‘What becomes of a Broken Hearted’. Good song, but no panda sliding! 🙂
The biggest problem with anthropomorphism is the excessive backlash against it, as Jerry hints at with the rhetorical question about whether or not the panda is playing.
Far too many behaviors of animals are presented as behaviors of humans, and there’s no shortage of would-be pedants ready to offer survivalist explanations for any non-human animal undertaking these behaviors.
Some of our behaviors no doubt originated for some “survivalist” reason, too. 🙂
Indeed; we share so much of our physiology, including brain physiology, with so many other vertebrates that it seems more than a bit of a stretch to suggest that shared behaviors must somehow be accompanied by different mental processes.
That sort of reasoning makes perfect sense in a dualistic spiritualist Platonic idealist world, of course, but probably isn’t even coherent in a naturalistic explanation.
b&
It wasn’t long ago that people were laughed out of the room for suggesting that animals like cats and dogs had feelings. Thankfully, science has shown they do but anyone who has spent time with non human animals knew this would be the conclusion.
People need to understand we are all animals and mammal brains are pretty much the same.
Indeed, in the 19th century, during the development of medicine and surgery, key advances came through ingenious but hideous experiments on dogs. The experimenters had no anesthetics of course but reasoned that since the dogs were essentially automatons, their howling and kicking reflected no inner pain. Gentlemen, cut away!
On the other hand, our sexual physiology, mating habits, and family structure are considerably different from those of even our closest cousins, the chimps and gorillas. So in fact we have hard empirical evidence that processes at the very core of our emotional life can change substantially in just a few million years.
That suggests we should be cautious about extrapolating our experience onto creatures separated from us by almost a hundred million of years of evolution. Even if the apparent play behavior is indeed homologous with human play (which has not been established), it’s still being experienced through the lens of a different brain shaped by a different evolutionary history.
Isn’t that most likely do to how our physiology differs? I’m thinking specifically to women having menstrual cycles instead of estrus.
Interestingly, Ursula K. Leguin’s book, The Left Hand of Darkness sort of explores what it would be like if humans came into estrus.
Hmm, word connections:
estrus
Esther
Easter
esterdiol (sp.?)
estrogen
progesterone
This naming scheme was developed by the legendary Polly Ester and her husband Fester. I think, if they were with us now, they would be proud that you found their work connectedly inspiring.
Or musth. Around here the moose and elk go (on their) nuts once a year. Try to imagine a species that was sexually active all the time. Wouldn’t they be sexually insane all the time?
Exactly. There’re significant physiological differences between tetrapods, but there still remain significant physiological similarities.
I’m not at all suggesting that cognition is identical across all such species. I’m only suggesting that we should expect a repeat of the pattern: fundamental similarities even in the midst of significant differences.
You’d be astounded to discover a mammal with an entirely different skeletal pattern, though you wouldn’t at all be surprised to discover that our fingers are a bat’s wing supports or that our foot is the entire lower half of the horse’s rear leg.
Similarly, you should be astounded to discover that animals don’t feel pain and pleasure, though it’s not at all surprising that some animals can figure out doorknobs and others can’t.
b&
Of course they have feelings. But it does not follow that their feelings must therefore be the same as ours, or that applying our emotional vocabulary to their behavior tells us something true about their experience.
But neither does it follow that they’re always different.
The challenge, I would think, would be in determining where the similarities are and where the differences are.
A first-level approximation should be possible just by relying on our own ability to read the emotions of others. For example, if a set of people can reliably identify play in humans, and that same set reaches a consensus with respect to play in pandas, we should assume with reasonable confidence that the pandas are, in fact, actually playing.
b&
You can actually say the same thing about humans. I’m not privy to your inner thought & feelings so I can’t be sure how they compare with mine, but I make reasonable assumptions, based on your actions as a human, what your inner feelings may be.
Diana: Good point, and in fact we often guess wrong about what our fellow humans are feeling. Marriages break up over this. So I remain skeptical of the reliability of our guesses about what animals are feeling.
They’re not perfect, but they’re far from perfectly unreliable. And the less precision you want of them, the more reliable they are.
Think of it like the comparison between an yardstick and a laser rangefinder. Using the yardstick, you can be pretty confident that the far wall is about twenty feet away. Using the laser rangefinder, you can draw a detailed 3-D map of the drywall surface texture.
We’re not trying to determine the panda’s exact internal mental state, here, but it’s pretty obvious that it’s playing, as opposed to threatening to attack or begging for food or expressing annoyance or what-not.
b&
Not perfect is precisely my point. There’s a lot of certainty being expressed in this thread over something that we agree is not perfect.
Yes, we’re arguing over how wide the error bars should be.
I and the others are mostly suggesting that those error bars, in this case, reasonably include play and exclude other options, though the exact nature of the play might not be perfectly understood.
You seem to be arguing that the error bars should be wider such that play might or might not be an option and something else radically unlike play might be a better fit, which I don’t at all see is warranted.
b&
I’m arguing that the most important thing is not to fool yourself, and that the easiest way to fool yourself is by trusting your own intuition.
As for the panda, I grant that play is a plausible explanation for what we see here, while leaving open the possibility that we could be wrong. Quite a few commenters seem to be categorically denying that possibility, on no evidence but their own intuition.
Again, yes, we could theoretically be worng.
But, if we are, chances are superlative that we’re equally worng when we describe young children as playing, or when we say that cats are engaging in play when we play with them.
Seems to me that the level of skepticism required to discount play as the most reasonable explanation is unwarranted. The only remaining possible options quickly converge on conspiracy theories — that we’re unable to determine when other humans are playing, that play requires a non-material spiritual soul, that the panda is doing something that’s exactly like play but for some utterly alien reason, and so on.
More doubt would be warranted if we were trying to pin down the nature of the play, perhaps. But significantly holding out for the possibility that it might not be play seems to me like significantly holding out for the possibility that a duck-sized bird making quacking sounds as it swims on a duck pond right after it flew in might not be a duck after all (even if we’re not sure what species of duck it is).
b&
But I didn’t discount play as the most reasonable explanation. I’m not the one ruling out explanations here.
Let’s hear it for mirror neurons! They’re also how you know your own inner state….
b&
and theory of mind.
Agree with Ben (with caution). Better still, a panda recognizes another panda playing and joins in.
For that matter, play is a very widely recognized behavior across species, with all sorts of interspecific examples. There’s that cat and owl who play, for example. And all sorts of commonalities…most common in youth, often mimics adult behaviors but with important safeguards, always is accompanied by mutual trust that no harm will ensue, and so on.
If you play with your cat the same way the cat plays with a dog, and that dog plays the same way with an horse, and you and the horse then again play together similarly…it’s a damned good bet that the same basic thing is going on in all individuals involved.
b&
In case other readers missed this news.. ESPN punished Keith Law for RESPONDING to ignorant and aggressive anti-evolution tweets by creationist, Curt Schilling who also works for ESPN.
Schilling is NOT being punished for his posts.
Schilling starts the imbroglio, yet ESPN punishes the guy who responds and defense rational thought!
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/espn-suspends-keith-law-twitter-report-article-1.2019755
What a country we live in!
I for one am turning off ESPN and letting them know why.
This panda isn’t playing. It’s just doing what the molecules that make up its body have to do, deterministically. 🙂
Sub