Esther, my first home office rabbit, took her editorial responsibilities very seriously, but like all bunnies, she understood the importance of a little creative downtime. Nobunny can be productive 24/7, and sometimes when she was suffering from writers' block she found it was more fun to shred that blank page than fill it with words.
Of course, no day at the office could start without an early morning of game of rabbit tag. The game involved running in circles around my chair as soon as I sat down at the computer, preferably trailing a strip of the perforated edges from the continuous computer paper I used with my old printer. (She never really accepted the ink jet printer that used single sheets.) Once she'd determined I'd had enough stretching exercises, Esther flopped down between the swivel chair legs to receive her morning massage and go into a bunny trance.
We humans have it all backward, working hard, then unwinding at the end of the day. Esther knew that a house rabbit's primary job is play. Not every species is as skilled in the fine art of fun, but most have their own creative ways of being nonproductive.
This is a favorite feline pastime. CatFancy columnist Karen Commings' cat, Pokey, dashes behind objects and waits - often with his feet and tail showing - until Karen "finds" him and yells "Booga, booga!" That's his cue to find a new place to hide and the game continues.
Long thought to be an exclusively canine sport, this traditional game is equally amusing for cats. Yarn balls are a popular choice of fetchable objects, along with standard sticks and balls. Dogs have discovered the Frisbee makes a high-energy variation on a very old trick.
Some of our animal friends prefer to create their own games. Heidi, one particularly inventive feline, enjoys playing "catch the bedspread" with her humans. The rules of the game are simple. Heidi sits under the bed; her owner shakes the bedspread; Heidi springs out and attacks the bedspread. There are many variations to this game. Almost any grabbable object can be substituted if no bedspread is available. Esther used to like to grab the hem of my skirt and do a kind of twirling, tugging dance around my feet. This variation has the added excitement of possibly tripping me or being stepped on which Heidi's game lacks.
Play is serious business for youngsters of any species. It helps them develop their coordination, their social graces, and their survival skills. But it's also fun for adults. In International Wildlife, Douglas Harbrecht reported on the antics of Pigface - a 50+ year-old sea turtle who spends much of his day batting a ball around his aquarium, tot he delight of National Zoo visitors.
Some typical animal games observed by researchers are a madcap version of hide-and-seek among Asian Pallas cats, leapfrog among monkeys, keepaway and tug-of-war among hyenas, king of the hill among otters, and tag among vampire bats. The kea - a parrotlike bird of New Zealand - lies on its back, balancing a small object with its feet, then tosses and chases after the object to lure other birds into the game. But we don't really need a scientific study to discover the obvious: animals just want to have fun!
Sure animals work hard and play hard, but everybody needs a little downtime. Wildlife experts have recently made the startling discovery that animals like to loaf. This won't come as news to pet owners, but the total amount of time animals spend doing nothing may surprise you. Cats, who typically engage in various degrees of snoozing, dozing, and lazing about for up to 80 percent of their day, aren't even the champions of nonactivity.
The cold-blooded female fence lizard is off duty for up to 97 percent of its life! Now that's a real lounge lizard! The super type-A seaside sparrow, who rests only 5 percent of his day, may want to rethink his lifestyle.
There are lots of good, evolutionarily sound reasons for animals goofing off. Cold-blooded species need to laze in the sun to warm up. Animals who live in polar regions take to torpor for similar reasons - it's metabolically economical. Hibernation is a popular way to get through those inhospitable winter months when food is scarce and temperatures demand too much fuel.
For other species, nonmovement can serve strategic purposes, like not being seen by predators or not being seen by prey. For the hunter, patience is a virtue; if you wait long enough lunch might just come to you.
But why ask why animals like to lounge? According to zoologist Joan Herbers, some animals lounge simply "because they would prefer to lie around in the shade on a hot day than to work for a living." And we call them dumb animals!
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