Play fighting does not affect subsequent fighting success in wild meerkats

Abstract

Despite more than three decades of research, the adaptive significance of play behaviour remains unknown. The practice hypothesis asserts that the primary function of play is to provide animals with the opportunity to practise and refine motor skills needed in adulthood. The apparent similarity between play fighting and serious fighting has led to the assertion that play is ‘optimally designed’ for the enhancement of combat skills. However, the practice hypothesis of play fighting has never been tested. I used data from a wild population of meerkats, Suricata suricatta (a cooperatively breeding mongoose that shows marked reproductive skew), to examine whether play experience improved an individual's subsequent fighting ability. First, meerkats showed no sex difference in frequency of play fighting (consistent with the optimal design argument, since both males and females fight to obtain the dominant breeding position in a group). Second, frequency of play fighting was not positively correlated with the subsequent likelihood of winning play fights, or the degree of improvement in play-fighting success, as would be expected if play improved fighting manoeuvres (and such manoeuvres must be the same in both play fighting and serious fighting if motor skills are to be effectively practised). Finally, individuals that ultimately won fights for a vacant dominancy did not play fight any more frequently as youngsters, or show any greater success in winning play fights, than matched same-sexed littermates that they defeated in combat.