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Outside/In

Why do animals play?

Outside/In

NHPR

Society & Culture, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Nature, Science

4.71.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We’re used to seeing dogs and cats play with toys or get the zoomies… but do animals like rats and bumblebees play too? What is animal play for? How do scientists even decide what counts as play? Today, we’re taking a serious look at goofy behavior. We’ll discover the five-part checklist that many scientists use to recognize play in nature, and find out why taking turns is so important for healthy brain development.  This episode is a collaboration between Outside/In and Tumble, the science podcast for kids.  Featuring Junyi Chu and Jackson Ham Produced by Lindsay Patterson, Marshall Escamilla, and Taylor Quimby. For a transcript and full list of credits, go to outsideinradio.org.    SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In.  Follow Outside/In on Instagram or join our private discussion group on Facebook.   LINKS Love this episode? Looking for family-friendly podcasts to listen to? There are over 150 episodes of Tumble to check out, including a few of our favorites:  Do Trees Fart? The Swift Quake Why Are Sloths Slow Are Cats Evil?  The five-part play checklist mentioned in the episode was developed by play researcher Gordon M. Burghardt. His paper, “Play in fishes, frogs and reptiles,” answers some other really interesting questions about animal play.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

This episode of Outside In is made possible in part by Antioch University, empowering adult learners for career advancement and building a more just society, with more than 175 programs rooted in social justice, including online and low residency masters, doctoral, and certificate programs in environmental studies.

0:16.4

Learn more at antioch.edu.

0:30.2

Hey, this is outside in.

0:34.3

I'm Nate Hedgy, and here with me in the studio is producer Taylor Quimby.

0:36.3

Hey, Nate, so I have a question.

0:40.0

Did you play The Floor is Lava when you were a kid?

0:51.9

Yeah. Oh, do you what I remember is I remember that little level of like anxiety and fun panic that would happen when a game felt real. Yeah. You're talking about imagination. Yeah.

1:12.2

So the floor is lava is played in houses and playgrounds all over the country. The basic premise is you can't touch the floor or you're out. So kids jump from couch cushions or hop from rock to rock or however they're doing it. I played the floor as lava growing up. My kid spontaneously discovered it at some point. A few years ago, it became the subject of a very weird Netflix game show.

1:17.1

It's the hottest game show in history.

1:25.0

And all this got me wondering, is the floor is lava, like a fundamental human experience?

1:36.6

Mm.

1:37.0

Is everyone from South Korea to Zimbabwe to the United States is all playing their own form of lava?

1:44.0

Exactly. So I did some digging and take this with a grain of salt because this is just people

1:49.5

chatting on Reddit. But it does seem that kids and countries all over the world grew up playing

1:55.0

some version of this game. In Norway, and forgive me, I'm going to use Google Translate to

2:00.2

help me here.

2:01.7

It is called... Yorna rifti...

2:03.0

Which translates to...

2:04.6

The ground is poisonous.

2:06.4

Oh, yeah, that's just as bad as lava.

2:09.0

Poison ground.

2:09.9

In Japan, kids play...

...

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