Is the Lizard Playing a Video Game?
Beautiful little video of a lizard playing Ant Crusher.
Now, the lizard is playing a video game (this is the activity it is performing).
But is it playing a game? As in: does the lizard perceive this activity as to be different from crushing/eating real ants?
Discuss. (I think the answer is no.)















I think the owner of the lizard is playing the game through the lizard. The lizard is more like a peripheral.
The lizard likely noticed the ants aren’t going in its mouth, but I doubt it understands why. The lizard doesn’t care, anyways, since it keeps smashing.
The person who made the video, however, obviously cares what the lizard does or does not do to those virtual ants. There’s a differential of outcomes for the lizard, and the actual outcome of the game its playing doesn’t matter (the person just hits play again). If the lizard had refused to play, I doubt they would have posted a video of a lizard staring blankly at a phone. To revise my first sentence: the lizard is the game. The player won the game, since the lizard did indeed smash virtual ants.