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.

The lizard no more plays the game than does Big Bkue ‘play’ chess.
There’s more to play than performance…

@Aaron and Stewart Ah, good points.
I also think there is something interesting here, taking us into the domain of sci-fi authors: are you only playing a game if you are aware that you are playing a game? Probably, right?

Hence interesting stories like Ender’s Games or Wargames playing with that question.

I am not sure the dragon even perceives the ants as ants. They might resemble ants, but they are flat, smell wrong and taste differently. I know my cat doesn’t recognize himself in a mirror or other animals on the tv screen. From the way thedragon alsokeeps a close eye on the person with the camera, I get the impression it is definately performing. It might actually be playing a game, one where it is rewarded with food or something off screen, but it is not the video game.

@Joris My (very limited) understanding is that a reptile would not be able to “play” in the sense of, say, play-fighting (pretending to bite other lizards without actually biting), so I think it is simply trying to catch the ants, continually surprised that they don’t taste like ants?

… but I think this points to some nuances that are not well described in the game definitions that I know of, namely the assumption that *the player* is assumed to be aware that the activity has “negotiable consequences”, or is “artificial”, or “unproductive”, and so on.

PS. Perhaps it is present in one of the definitions Frasca discusses in his PhD “_Play_ is to somebody an engaging activity in which the player believes to have active participation and interprets it as constraining her immediate future to a set of probable scenarios, all of which she is willing to tolerate.”
On the other hand that does not distinguish well between play and non-play.

I\’m in the middle of an extended bush camping trip so I don\’t have any books to hand (except an atlas, but that doesn\’t help!). But I\’m sure a number of play theorists describe play as a state of consciousness rather than an activity. This makes it very hard to determine when play is occurring merely through observation. As Jesper mentions, some animals play fight – but when doing so they limit their aggressiveness, suggesting that they \’know\’ they are not engaged in real fighting. I don\’t think the lizard is making such a distinction. The Enders Game question is a good one. Ender believes himself to be playing so he is, right?

@Stewart, Jesper: The idea of “play” is extremely misleading, isn’t it? When we say “play a game” we’re conflating two distinct actions. For the time being, let me try and avoid using the word “play” altogether, in order to convey the idea of simply doing whatever action someone or something does to or with a game. Perhaps: “engage with a game” or “do a game”.

(Aside: I realize I’m circling back to Jesper’s original post: “Now, the lizard is playing a video game (this is the activity it is performing).” But, hey, thoughts are thoughts. You might get a kick out of it.)

Actually, let me verb “game”: Does the lizard need to know it games in order to game?

No, the lizard does not need to be aware of its gaming. Gaming can happen without the parties to the game being aware that they are gaming. This definition of gaming is much more receptive to the meta-games that we have pointed out in our comments, such as the possibility of the lizard receiving treats for its performance. Thus, the meta-games in the video:

1. The ant smashing game
2. The “can my lizard smash virtual ants” game
3. The “will my owner give me treats for doing something” game
(4. The “I can get more views on YouTube than you can” game)

The mobile doesn’t know who or what games on it; the structure–or system, if you prefer–of the ant game dictates that a game occurs no matter what happens in the mind of the gamer. In response to the Ender’s Game question: I like to think of video games as games that attempt to trick someone into gaming without making it obvious to the person that they are gaming. (Keyword being attempts.) At the very least, video games can disguise the true game.

The problem I see with what I just explained is that it risks a kind of postmodern apocalyptic “OMG. What if everything is a game and we don’t know it? theory.

I don’t like apocalyptic theories. I use it here only to elaborate the difference between gaming as an activity and gaming as play.

@Aaron I like the idea of the multiple games going on at the same time, but I do think that we play games, knowing that we are _playing a game_, with all the baggage this comes with.
If a teacher gave you a test and later revealed that “nevermind, it was just a game”, that would be perceived as a betrayal of trust, right?

@Jesper the notion of awareness of playing (a game) is not sci-fi: Schechner mentions it as a characteristic of dark play (some players are playing while others don’t know that).
Probably that’s what the lizard is doing: ‘hah, humans, you think you’re so clever making fun of me but I am just LARPing”.

First, let’s avoid some linguistic traps: What do you mean with “play”?

If you mean “performing the actions entailed in playing a game”, then by that definition, of course, obviously.

If you mean “engages in the kind of activity/mindset psychology and ethology denote as “playing”, then the answer seems “it depends”. Take Burghardt’s five defining features of play (from “The Genesis Animal Play: Testing the Limits”, MIT Press 2005, 81):
1. The activity has limited immediate function
2. The activity has an endogenous component – it is voluntary and autotelic
3. The activity differs structurally and/or temporally from the “real” activity it is based on.
4. Repeat performance
5. The activity happens in a relaxed field – the animal is not stressed or frightened.

Burghardt documents several instances of object play in lizards, especially big Komodo warans (284-290).

So: Criteria 3, 4, 5 – check
Criteria 1, 2 – it depends.

Does the lizard engage with the game *for the sake of it*, without wanting to actually catch and eat the ants, or is the lizard duped by the mimicry/fabrication of the virtual ants? If a fly falls for a mimicry flesh-eating plant, the fly is not “playing” or “pretending” to want the nectar/believe it is entering a regular flower. Same goes for the lizard in this video – and people unaware they are participating in a pervasive game/LARP.

@Sebastian Ah, the Genesis of Animal Play is on my bookshelf, unread.

Interesting criteria for play – they do match most game definitions in various ways.

The standout is 5), which seems to correspond to traditional descriptions of play as non-productive (someone who “plays” for a living is likely to be stressed on occasion, hence not playing in this definition). My personal game definition is a little broader, allowing the same game (activity) to be potentially used with and without tangible consequences.

@Jesper – yes, I highly recommend Burghardt.

As for the criteria, (5) in specific: “Relaxed field” is more an empirical precondition for play (as an activity and mindset) to happen. Yes, serious consequences beyond the game itself can be a stressor, but relaxed field means more something like “animals *usually* don’t start playing if there is another imminent danger around.” Same goes for child’s play: They must perceive the situation as a trusted safety zone – not in the sense that failure has no serious consequence (see below), but that there is also no danger around the situation.

As for consequences: Coming from a more psychological perspective on this myself, I see it all revolving around “autonomy” (criterium 2). And if you look into the psychology of autonomy, “serious/tangible consequences” attached to an activity by *others* is what thwarts the experience of autonomy. So lack of serious/tangible consequence is *in general* conducive to perceiving an activity as autonomous, hence playful, but I *can* also perceive gambling for money as playful, if *I chose* to engage in it, and feel I can disengage if I want to; but if it is forced on me, then it stops being play. What makes “negotiable consequences” playful is that I feel I could freely choose to enter and leave a situation that has them attached. This is a property of play-as-activity/mindset/situation, not a property of games-as-designed-artifacts. But that’s another story :).

Just for sake of comparison, here’s a frog doing the same thing.

Frog Plays Ant Crusher

In terms of the meta-game the end response of the frog (it bites the owner’s thumb when he tries to reset the game) the different response suggests there may be something to this perspective.

Although, however, I really don’t know (because I’m in no way, shape, or form a Ludologist or even pretend to be one on TV) the difference between the experimentation in the spirit of the scientific method on one hand, and a game on the other.

Hi Jesper,

looks to me the lizard is having fun!
Also, it evidently recognize that the images are (“surrogate stimuli” of) insects, given that the lizard responds to them with its tongue-extension behaviour, in a pretty coherent pattern. So it understood the goal, and knows the rules by instict.
The interesting question, would be to what extent it perceives the ants as fictional (many studies in ethology use zimbellos, and somehow prove they are perceived as “real” by the animals).

@Aaron: I couldn’t disagree more with your first statement. How would the owner be playing *the videogame*? Probably s/he’s having fun, but of looking at her lizard playing, exactly in the same way s/he could have fun staring at her cat.

One of the funniest videos ever!

i think some of you might have seen it already, but i think the answer to the question goes something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlEzvdlYRes. ;-)

i have never been a lizard pretty much like most of you i guess. so im not 100% sure, but i really doubt that the lizard knows about what an ipad is. so after the first ant that tastes more like glass than ant – does he start to play or simply act out a genetic program for lizard survival? judging from the video i would guess he does what he has to do. theres no way of knowing since we cant communicate with him, but from our point of view there is nothing here other than a lizard getting sour. or do you think he looks like hes having fun in a game about lizards and ants? ;-)

I am fascinated by the idea of making video games especially for animals – and there have been a spate of articles and videos lately, usually involving iOS devices (is it all just Apple PR?) where various animals (lizards, amphibians, cats, orang-utans, dolphins, pigs) are seen or described interacting with or ‘playing’ games or multimedia on the devices.

When I have mentioned to colleagues that we could ask our students to do this as an exercise, they look at me like I am crazy. “Where is the business case?” they ask. Well what if pork ended up tasting better if the pigs had some kind of game to play with in their pens? We know that cows which are allowed to ‘play’ with an automatic back-scratcher (certainly a kind of interactive multimedia) tend to produce more milk, and are more co-operative.

I’m glad to see Bateson’s description of animal play has entered the discussion (“the playful nip denotes the bite, but does not denote what would be denoted by the bite”). It’s very relevant, and cases outside the world of mammals seem to be rare and are of special interest. But the play of mammals is clearly based on instinct, as is the tongue-extension response of the lizard or amphibian. Almost certainly a reflex action. The question is whether the play of a kitten with a piece of string is more ‘genuinely’ playful than the play of a lizard with the ant crusher game.

Certainly, consciousness plays an important part, but I wonder how conscious is the kitten (or even the adult cat) of the boundary of play when some long mouse-tail like object skitters by its peripheral vision. Perhaps the satisfaction that comes of play is just an instinctive response too, even in humans. Perhaps any consciousness we may have of the experience is irrelevant, or just a way to rationalise the ‘wasting’ of time on something which may be trivial or unnecessary.

Another class of behavior Bateson mentioned (apart from play) was threat, which is also a case where the bared tooth or the snarl denotes the bite, but does not – yet – denote what would be denoted by the bite. Now, there’s no doubt that the threat is real, perhaps more real than a game, although the combat is still fictional – projected into a contingent future. Lizards are not known to play quite like mammals, but they do engage in threat behavior, as do birds and even some invertebrates. Threat appears to be more widespread than play in the animal kingdom, but employs the same kinds of fictional shifts.

Also bullying may be mentioned. When confronted, a bully will often say something like “it was just a joke”. And for them, a joke is probably exactly what it was. But the point is that for the victim, it’s not “just a joke” at all. Just like the real live mouse played with -apparently for fun – by the cat is not enjoying himself at all.

@Brennan Don’t you think there always is a business case when it comes to pets?

The question of consciousness is a good one … Hypothetically, one could imagine that it was a single brain center shared by all mammals that lights up when we think of something as playful, as in the Bateson example. (It is probably way more complicated.)

If so, it’s more something that tints our experience of the world, but whose mechanisms we are not conscious about – we only see the effect?

By the way, one of my former colleagues has a blog about games for animals:
http://ludusanimalis.blogspot.com/