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Digital games aimed at animal players are a growing area in both entertainment and research, enabled particularly by the mass availability of touchscreen technology. These games rely on animals’ natural proclivity for play and can facilitate playful interactions between species.
Prerequisites for Digital Play in Animals
Humans are far from the only species known to engage in playful behavior. Wirman et al. (2011) argue that “all mammals play, including humans,” and play-like behaviors have also been identified in birds, reptiles, fish, and invertebrates such as octopuses (Burghardt 2005). While the evolutionary dynamics and psychological mechanisms of play are not yet fully understood, it is known that in both humans and other animals, playing is a crucial prerequisite for physiological, psychological, and social development (Bekoff 1972) and play deprivation can result in serious developmental deficiencies in adulthood (Hol et al. 1999)....
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References
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Fiadotau, M. (2018). Digital Games for Animals. In: Lee, N. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08234-9_191-1
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