You all know how interested I am in observing tarantula play and behavior, and that I regularly place “toys” and other objects in the my tarantulas’ tanks to observe their behaviors. They have pleasantly surprised me many times – most notably, my chilean rose hair is quite famous on the internet for the weird things she has done with her ping pong ball!

However, aside from these strange things I have seen from my spiders and other tarantula owners’ experiences, it seems to be common belief in the tarantula keeping hobby that tarantulas and spiders don’t have the capacity to play for many reasons. Many of us believe that they don’t have the “brains” or intellectual bandwidth to understand what play or fun might be. We mainly believe these are very basic and instinctual creatures with zero intellect. But I was lucky enough to stumble upon a VERY interesting article that studies the possibility of play in reptiles, spiders and other critters that we normally did not believe could “play.” Here’s a great excerpt from the article explaining this:

Russian scientists described this particular instance of reptile play in 2015, after observing the astronaut-geckos with cameras inside the spacecraft. The experiment, designed to study general behavior of reptiles in weightlessness, added to growing evidence that it’s not just kittens and baby chimps that play, but also birds, reptiles, fish and even invertebrates, including spiders and wasps. We have reports of octopuses fooling around with Lego blocks and Komodo dragons waging tug of war with their keepers. In 2015, a study of tooth marks on fossils showed that the bones may have served as a toy for a tyrannosaurid more than 65 million years ago. Play in non-mammalian species offers us novel insights into the activity’s function and evolution. Until recently, however, researchers doubted these diverse species were even capable of the behavior.

For decades, if not centuries, scientists rejected the notion that animals other than mammals actually play, even when faced with observational reports of frolicking fish or apparently fun-loving birds. “People tried to find every possible explanation,” says Gordon Burghardt, a behavioral biologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “They thought maybe the animals just tried to knock parasites off their bodies, even though there was no evidence they were doing that. Or they’d say that the animals were so stupid they didn’t know the thing they were playing with wasn’t edible, even though you wouldn’t say that about a cat playing with a rubber mouse.”

Another interesting find about animal intelligence happened in regards to a Nile soft-shelled turtle. He had spent most of his life alone in an enclosure at a zoo in Washington DC and he began to self-mutilate, clawing his face and biting himself so much he got infections. One of the researchers said, “So the reptile curator thought, ‘Hey, maybe he’s bored?’ No one back then thought that reptiles could get bored.” So they gave him toys – and it worked!

In 1991, Burghardt and other researchers gave Pigface two basketballs and a round hoop fashioned from a garden hose, then recorded his behavior. The turtle’s playfulness wasn’t immediately apparent on the video until Burghardt decided to speed up the film. Suddenly, Pigface resembled a frolicking dog: He’d nose, bite, push and shake the toys with his mouth. “That was the first pretty good proof that reptiles could play,” he says. Boredom cured.

 Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado Boulder defines play like this, “Play is a kaleidoscope, a mix of different behaviors from lots of different contexts, like predatory behavior, aggressive behavior, sexual behavior, and it’s this mix that allows animals to know that it’s play and not something serious.” Bekoff suggests that play doesn’t have to be “cerebral” like humans believe, it can come in many different, more simple forms.

Now what does this have to do with spiders? Interesting findings were reported in this article about spiders, too. Spiders don’t have a cortex, so things get a little more complicated. Jonathan Pruitt, an evolutionary ecologist who studies spider behavior at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said: “Spiders don’t really have a brain, just a decentralized nervous system with three clusters of neurons. They can barely see each other, they live in a vibratory world and yet they are doing something that is consistent with what you could define as play.” However, a 2012 study reported peculiar behavior of the Anelosimus studiosus spider:

Males and immature females of this species engage in what Pruitt calls “almost-sex,” and they do it over and over again. From a functional perspective, it doesn’t make sense: The females are not yet able to reproduce. The first thought that comes to mind is that the spiders just don’t know they can’t mate successfully, but Pruitt doesn’t believe this to be true. The “almost-sex” differs in quite important ways from the real deal, one of them being that the male doesn’t end up being eaten. Under normal reproductive conditions, there’s a 30 percent chance that a female will eat the male. “But they never kill any of the males during these play interactions,” Pruitt says.

We all know that female spiders and tarantulas are infamous for eating their mates after “real” romantic encounters – so could these spiders have been playing?! One researcher in the article said, “You don’t need a big brain to play. How it is organized is probably more important. Honeybees have tiny brains and yet they are capable of pretty advanced communication and learning.” Here’s another fascinating thing they found:

Burghardt and other researchers also argue that when play first evolved, it didn’t necessarily have any benefits for the animals. It was simply just there. Only later on in the evolutionary process would play — at least in some cases — get added functional value. Sometimes, the benefits would be simple and immediate: exercising muscles, or exploring the environment. Other times, the benefits would be delayed until adulthood. Among the best examples of such a scenario is the almost-sex of spiders: Both females and males who practice this courtship are later more successful in real reproductive behaviors. “They seem to be gaining experience,” Pruitt explains.

Another very interesting point made in the article is the subject of brain chemistry. The article states:

Experiments done in rats hint that specific chemical messengers in the brain, such as dopamine and endocannabinoids, may have a role in the pleasure of play. The endocannabinoid system, which is involved in processing sensations such as pain and regulating mood, was once thought to exist only in mammals. But it does occur in fish, birds, amphibians and possibly even in sea urchins. As for dopamine, long known to be a gatekeeper for the brain’s pleasure center, “it’s present in spiders, and we know it has large influence on behavior,” says Pruitt, yet he admits that we still have zero idea whether it could make play fun for spiders.

Dopamine is present in SPIDERS?!?!?! That makes me look at this entirely differently! While we may have many more questions than answers, this article has opened up a lot of different thoughts for me. Bekoff said, “One thing we might learn is that play is a very basic behavior and a very needed one in the repertoire of very diverse species. Ant play may be different from dog play, but it may be important for the ants.”

I love this quote from one of the other researchers, as it shows perhaps why we are so hesitant to wonder about spider and other nonmammal intelligence:

I think we have to get rid of some of our anthropocentrism. The history of science is littered with, ‘Gee, we humans are special.’ And we are not special. You have to realize this when you see octopuses play.”

You can read the whole article here.