The majority of mammals love to play. In animals, play has a vital role for developmental consequences. A new investigation due to be published in the online journal PLoS ONE, demonstrates that young chimpanzees develop and play in a very similar way to human children, which could explain the role of play behavior in humans.

The authors of the investigation, Giada Cordoni and Elisabeth Palagi, of the University of Pisa in Italy, discovered that in infancy solitary play among chimpanzees peaks. In addition they found that between infants and juveniles the time spent in social play was almost constant.

However, as the chimpanzees grew up, the way in which they socially played changed quite a lot in terms of playmate choice and measures like complexity.

The researchers compared these behaviors to prior investigations conducted with humans and discovered that both species show considerable qualitative and quantitative development in play behavior from infancy to juvenility.

Furthermore, the team discovered that both humans and chimps communicate and build social networks using playful facial expressions.

After examining playmate choice, they found that both species prefer peers to play with.

According to Dr. Palagi, this is the first investigation to compare the ontogeny of play behavior between humans and chimpanzees, in a standardized way. It is vital, as this kind of human data primarily comes from psychological investigations, not from ethological studies.

Written by Grace Rattue