Kingdom of Play: What Ball-bouncing Octopuses, Belly-flopping Monkeys, and Mud-sliding Elephants Reveal about Life Itself

Why have we mammals made it as far as we have in evolutionary terms? One answer to that questions is "play." And it's not just us animals. Think octopuses and corvids for other examples. In Kingdom of Play: What Ball-bouncing Octopuses, Belly-flopping Monkeys, and Mud-slinging Elephants Reveal about Life Itself, David Toomey explores the scientific evidence explaining how and why animals engage in play. As he explains early on, the research in this field is scant. Somehow "play" has been looked at as a borderline field. The attitude seems to be "Yes, yes, we play. But playing is what happens when we're not engaged in the struggle to survive—it's a little something on the side that's just sort of, well, fun."

Play is a key contributor show more to our development both culturally and in evolutionary terms. And, yes, yes, I know those are two ill-defined terms in a sort of blurry Venn diagram, but I trust you can follow my meaning. If this topic interests you, Toomey's book is a great place to start some exploration—and he can steer you toward the best of the more formal research writing.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via Edelweiss; the opinions are my own. show less

I won this book on Goodreads.

A bit science-y for me but a nice bit of research on animal play and perceived meaning of the play observation.

A good read if you like to learn about the natural world around us.