What is object play?

Object play is the involvement of inanimate objects of various kinds in an animal's play activities. Fagen (1981) defines 'divertive interactions with an inanimate object … including exploratory manipulation', when describing object play. It is a type of play behaviour familiar to pet cat and dog owners who regularly provide their pets with toys. In the absence of human manufactured toys, domestic, captive and wild animals may use a wide variety of objects such as sticks, rocks, leaves, fruit, feathers, dead prey animals and even items of discarded human bric-a-brac as objects to play with (see Heinrich & Smolker, Chapter 2). Along with other types of play described in other chapters, object play is characterised by boisterousness and appears, anthropomorphically, to be enjoyable. Objects are thrown into the air, chased and captured, pulled to pieces, kicked, shaken and bitten.

Animals of all ages, from diverse taxa, play with objects. While nonhuman primates and carnivorous species such as cats, dogs and bears, are regular performers, other animals also play with objects. Play with twigs, small stones and nutshells by corvids, parrots and other birds is well known (see Heinrich & Smolker, Chapter 2), as is play with human manufactured toys by a wide variety of zoo animals, from turtles to rhinoceroses.

Detailed scientific study aimed specifically at object play has been confined to a small range of species, particularly domestic cats and dogs, some wild canids, laboratory rats, primates, polecats and their domestic counter-parts, ferrets. Domestic species are convenient subjects, because they are easy to house and handle, and are less sensitive to stress induced by captivity.