Marc Bekoff on why dogs play fair
(Credit: Amber Reeves)
Marc Bekoff: The question we would have at hand would be how do dogs signal play, and the other question would be how do they communicate that this is play, and not fighting, and not mating behavior, and not predatory behavior.
That’s Marc Bekoff, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Colorado. He and his colleagues study animal behavior through many hours of careful observation, with the goal of learning how animals communicate when they play. One signal is what Bekoff calls the “play-bow.”
Marc Bekoff: That’s when one animal crouches on their forelimbs and puts their hind end up and wags their tail and sometimes barks. If two dogs are playing, and one bites the other dog really hard, what we discovered is that we would see a play-bow after the bite, as if the other dog said, “I’m sorry I bit you, let’s play.”
In his most recent work, Bekoff speaks of social animals learning moral codes of fair play, which evolved to help animals survive as a cohesive group.
Marc Bekoff: Some moral behaviors might just be hard-wired into your genes because they have to be performed so the group can function as a well-oiled unit.
Marc Bekoff’s new book, Wild Justice, will be published in 2009.
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