Why It Pays to Play Around

Marc Bekoff, a researcher at the University of Colorado and a lifelong student of animal behavior, argues that play broadens an animal’s behavioral repertoire, giving them the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances. In other words, animal play creates diverse behaviors, regardless of whether that diversity is immediately useful. One hallmark of play is that it suspends judgment so that we are no longer focused on selecting good ideas and discarding bad ones.

Source: nautil.us