[angstrom]

My three-year-old daughter plays this with cat. It's a cross-species thing that is possibly part of mammalian brain development in origin.

The cat is less than one year old. Our 17 year old cat does not engage in this at all and hisses at the kitten for even trying to start a game of tag. This makes me wonder if that origin is more related to predator/prey.

[ViktorRay]

In regards to your 17 year old cat…

All mammalian species have something in common.

When mammals are young we all love playing. This is true for humans, dogs, elephants, primates, cats and so on.

But play ends up disappearing as the mammal gets older. Compare a playful baby elephant to an adult elephant. The baby elephant loves playing. Not just with other elephants but with humans and dogs and so on. But older elephants are more likely to watch and less likely to play.

This is why your 1 year old cat loves playing while your 17 year old cat doesn’t.

It’s a very interesting phenomenon

[llamaimperative]

Play is a semi-structured way of learning important skills! Evolution really just has to make it engaging enough for you to learn the skills, not much of a reason for it to persist after that.

[fsckboy]

>not much of a reason for it to persist after that

for working out and keeping fit!... oh, hmmm, I guess that's glaring evidence that working out and keeping fit are not beneficial after all

[llamaimperative]

I am clearly speaking from the perspective of evolutionary pressures. And you're right, there's very little evolutionary pressure on working out, staying fit, staying happy, etc. etc. beyond the bare minimum required to ensure propagation.

[ajuc]

Once you can't reproduce and can't help with reproduction evolution doesn't care if you stay fit.

[bongodongobob]

Well that's not the point of play to begin with, it's learning motor skills, so your logic doesn't make any sense.

[ViktorRay]

You don’t need to play to stay fit.

Adult lions don’t play like baby lions yet adult lions are still fit.

[triceratops]

Dogs seem to want to play until they're physically unable to.

[danans]

There's a theory that the domestication of dogs selected for the retention of juvenile behavioral traits into adulthood (non-suspiciousness, playfulness), vs wolves who do not retain those traits.

It's even thought that the first domesticated dogs pre-domesticated themselves to an extent because the less suspicious wolves were able to use human settlements' trash middens as a food source.

[justsomehnguy]

It's just knees.

[astrange]

The cat might not want to move as much anymore if it has arthritis.

[slibhb]

Young squirrels also play tag.

[jjtheblunt]

Predator vs prey i thought too