I hate to end the work week on a political note, so here’s a video of an adult black bear having fun with a soccer ball. I don’t think it’s trying to eat it; it’s just having fun! Some people say that animals don’t do anything for pure fun: it’s always practicing to be a predator, or to avoid being eaten by one, or so on. I don’t think this is any of that.
The YouTube video notes:
“This video was taken in a very rural area. We watched the bear as s/he played in the backyard from the safety of our house. He spent a good 20 minutes playing with my son’s soccer ball and climbing trees. My youngest son is two and the oldest is nine. It was a quarantine highlight.”
Seems like a false dichotomy to me. Enjoying play is likely one of nature’s adaptations which gets those animals to practice to be a predator etc.
Yes play in young mammals is certainly learning survival behaviour. There is a trade off between timidity & curiosity in most animals & I include humans,…
Charming! 😁
🐾🐾
Lovely end to the week – thanks!
“Some people say that animals don’t do anything for pure fun…”
Those people are nearly always people who have not ever spent any time around animals.
L
I don’t remember the circumstances, but I had an acquaintance who claimed they had a pet rabbit and a pet dog, and they would play ‘chase the rabbit’, where the rabbit would bounce off the dog, get it to chase it a bit, and then repeat.
Anyone who says that animals don’t do things for fun has never seen my kitten. She has like 20 different things she does for fun.
Among other things, she always knows where every toy she has is located at any given time, even if it’s on the other side of the house on another floor. My house has become a cat playground since I took her in a few months ago, so nearly every room has cat toys in it. She’ll often suddenly get up, jet out of the room, run up/down the stairs, and come back seconds later with a specific toy. She also has certain locations to which she brings her toys to make obstacle courses for herself. She regularly takes her puffy balls, mice, and other assorted toys and carries them to places like under the dining room and kitchen tables, where she has to jump over, squeeze under, and go through various openings, and bat her toys around those obstacles, thus making it more “fun” than when she just throws her toys up and down or bats at them in open space. She does a lot of things that can seemingly only be explained by the idea that they’re “fun” for her.
My cats both love their puff balls, but each has particular favorites. One likes to hide hers where she can’t reach them and then stares under the couch till we get the yardstick out to retrieve them, I think she’s playing us.
Haha, mine does that as well! She brings it over to the stove or refrigerator, drops it, looks at me, and then it under there. Then she sometimes spends a few minutes on her side, her little legs stuffed and her adorable face smushed as far under the appliance as possible, trying her best to get it out. If she fails, she just gets up and stars at me until I grab her feather on a stick and use it to retrieve the toy.
We’ve got feathers on sticks, too. Spoiled rotten😻
I usually go “toy hunting” once a week. I look under the refrigerator, stove, one of the couches in the living room, and one of the couches in the den. I tend to find about 20 toys combined under the two couches alone.
(I may have gone a bit overboard when it comes to buying cat toys and furniture over the last few months, but it’s been just as fun for me as it’s been for my kitten!)
Wait, you sure that’s a bear and not one of those hooligans what follows Manchester United as described by Bill Buford in his book Among the Thugs?
Love Bill Buford, but haven’t read this one. Did read a long article about working as a chef in France.
No, just Among the Thugs, and I loved it (even though I knew hardly anything about soccer, and only a bit more about soccer hooliganism before reading the book).
But I found Heat (the book I think you’re referencing) online, and plan to read it, since it concerns a subject about which I have a built-in interest.
Thx.
Yup, Heat it is. I think I just read a very long excerpt in probably The New Yorker. No, maybe Paris Review, where Buford was once editor. I sort of follow Barça soccer, and am disappointed that my boy Messi has been thrown out for a few games for very uncharacteristic hooliganish behavior.
And Heat, as in if you can’t stand it get out of the kitchen.
Does this fall under some kind of “Clarke’s Law” as applied to bears? The perfect, lightweight, plastic, air-filled ball does not exist in nature. Is the bear appreciating an alien analogy of god creation? 🙂
Couple of things re the J&J vaccine, drummed into me on Thurs/Friday by an extremely well informed, but not entirely disinterested party.
First the J&J vaccine was more widely tested around the world in an environment with the current variants. So (in this person’s opinion) its performance is probably comparable to the mRNA approach.
Second there is a four week lag time for full efficacy with this vaccine, and if you look at data after the four week time point (I have not seen the data) there were no deaths and no hospitalizations in the vaccinated group. In his opinion the storage advantages and single shot approach are a significant strength for widespread use across the world.
OK, wrong thread! Should have been Sat Hili~