Stuart Brown- Play is more than fun

so here we go a flyby of play it's got to be serious if the New York Times puts a cover story of their February 17th Sunday magazine about play at the bottom of this it says it's deeper than gender seriously but dangerously fun and a sandbox for new ideas about Evolution not bad except if you look at

that cover what's missing you see any adults well let's go back to the 15th century this is a courtyard in Europe and a mixture of 124 different kinds of play all ages solo play body play games taunting and there it is and I think this is a typical picture of what it was like in a courtyard then I

think we may have lost something in our culture so I'm going to take you through what I think is a remarkable sequence north of Churchill Manitoba in October and November there's no ice on Hudson Bay and this polar bear that you see is 1200 lb male he's wild and fairly hungry and Norbert rossing a German

photographer is there on scene making a series of photos of these huskys who are tethered and from out of stage left comes this wild male polar bear with a predatory gaze any of you have been to Africa or uh had a junkyard dog come after you there is a fixed kind of predatory gaze that you know you're in

trouble but on the other side of that predatory gaze is a female husky in a play bow wagging her tail and something very very unusual happens that fixed Behavior which is rigid and stereotyped and ends up with a meal changes and this polar bear stands over the Husky no claws extended no fangs taking a look

and they begin an incredible ballet a play ballet this is in nature it overrides the carnivorous nature and what otherwise would have been a short fight to the death and if you'll begin to look closely at the Husky that's bearing her throat to the polar bear and look a little more closely they're in an