For decades I’ve thought about how a simple behavior such as stretching and crouching on the forelimbs could become a play invitation signal in dogs and other animals. Many people also have asked me the same or a similar question, namely, how did a “bow” evolve into an action that is commonly called the “play bow?” To answer this question, it’s essential to consider a few principles of evolutionary biology—different forms of natural selection—and the work of Nobel prize winning ethologist Dr. Nicholas Tinbergen. We also need to focus on the evolutionary process underlying ritualization, namely how a particular behavior, in this case a visual signal called the “bow”, evolved to acquire communication value.
Having fun-on-the-run and playing fairly
While a good deal of nonhuman animal play is fun, chaotic, and fair, it’s also serious business for many animals including humans. It’s a no-brainer—dogs love to play with their buddies in all sorts of ways, and they have fun doing it. In “Playful fun in dogs” published in Current Biology in an issue devoted to the biology of fun, I cover much of what we know about social play in dogs, and other essays discuss fun in other mammals and also birds, fish, reptiles, and invertebrates.
Having fun means doing something that is amusing, enjoyable, and pleasurable and feeling good about it. It’s an evolved adaptation and important for keeping an action or activity in an individual’s behavioral repertoire. In my studies, I take a strongly evolutionary approach, using Niko Tinbergen’s integrative ideas about the questions with which ethological studies should be concerned: namely, evolution, adaptation, causation, and ontogeny (the development and emergence of individual differences). University of Tennessee psychologist Gordon Burghardt has suggested adding “subjective experience” to Tinbergen’s scheme to focus on what individuals are feeling.
So, concerning play and fun, we can ask: why did they evolve? How do they promote survival value and reproductive fitness and allow individuals to come to terms with the social situation in which they find themselves? What causes play and fun? How do play and fun develop? And, what is the emotional side of playing and having fun?
Playing dogs are magnets for others, and I am always amazed at how fast dogs invite strangers into a playgroup and how they are absorbed into the fun. I think it’s clear that dogs know when others are having fun and when they’re not.
How and why bowing came to mean “Let’s play and have fun”
The “bow” is an easy-to-recognize behavior: A dog or another animal crouches on their forelimbs, sticks their butt up in the air, and often barks or yelps when they perform this action. While they bow, they are stretching their muscles and tendons and perhaps warming up, getting ready to play with another individual(s). In evolutionary parlance, there’s been “stabilizing selection” for the bow. This simply means that the form of the bow—what it looks like—shares defining features across individuals that conforms to a norm.2
When dogs and other animals stand up from lying down and resting or sleeping, they often stretch their forelimbs and loosen up their body. When they do this, it looks like they are bowing and they are able to move around in different directions or spring here and there. When others see the bow, play may ensue, and through the process of ritualization, a bow can take on communication value to tell other individuals “I want to play with you.” Indeed, research shows bows are highly ritualized behaviors that are very unmistakable in dogs and other species. A bowing dog might put two and two together to get four as follows: If I do this then others want to play with me” and those who see a bow might be thinking something like, “When they do a bow they want to play with me.” As time goes on, bows become more directional and intentional and highly ritualized play signals that say, “Let’s play and have fun.” It’s an evolutionary wrap.
When I studied the variability in the duration and form of the canid play bow in infant coyotes, wolves, wolf-dog hybrids, beagles, and adult free-ranging dogs, both duration and form showed marked stereotypy. Research shows that the most stereotyped actions are those that are important in locomotion and communication. The bow is essentially a locomotor intention movement that also has signal value. It is entirely plausible that the signal value of the bow was increased via selection for stereotypy.
The moral landscape of play: Don’t bow if you don’t want to play
Play is a kaleidoscope of the senses. When canids and other animals play, they use actions such as vigorous biting, mounting, and body-slamming that could be easily misinterpreted by the participants. Years of painstaking video analyses by my students and me show, however, that individuals carefully negotiate play, following four general “golden rules” to prevent play from escalating into fighting.
The golden rules of fair play include:
1. Ask first and communicate clearly. Many nonhumans announce that they want to play and not fight or mate. Canids begin play sequences using a bow to solicit play, crouching on their forelimbs while standing on their hind legs. Bows are used almost exclusively during play and are highly stereotyped—that is, they always look the same—so the message “Come play with me” or “I still want to play” is clear.3
2. Mind your manners. Bows also are also known to punctuate play bouts so that when an individual does something that can cause play to stop, they then do a play bow to say something like, “Sorry I did that, I still want to play.” Dogs also consider their play partners’ abilities and engage in self-handicapping and role-reversing to create and maintain equal footing.4
3. Admit when you are wrong. When an animal misbehaves or accidentally hurts his play partner, they typically apologize, just like a human would. After an intense bite, a bow sends the message, “Sorry I bit you so hard—this is still play regardless of what I just did. Don’t leave; I’ll play fair.” For play to continue, the other individual must forgive the wrongdoing and forgiveness is almost always offered;
4. Be honest. An apology, like an invitation to play, must be sincere. Individuals who continue to play unfairly or send dishonest signals often quickly find themselves ostracized.
Coda: Why bowing matters
Studying how the “bow” became the “play bow” offers many lessons centering on the evolution of social behavior. Because play is essential for social, physical, and cognitive development and training for the unexpected, bowing allows it to occur when it otherwise might not. Playing and goofing off “for the hell of it” and playing fairly simply because it’s fun is very important to do.
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