Some people say, too, that the reason why a drowning person throws up his hands (the very worst thing he possibly could do under the circumstances) is that, being quite crazy with fear, he forgets completely his surroundings, remembers only the dim and far off time when the tree-folk escaped danger by climbing up out of the way, and reaches up for an imaginary branch which hasn’t been there these many thousand years. Perhaps this is so; for my part, I believe it is. At any rate, there is the wonderful grip of the new-born babe. Where did he get it if not by climbing trees, or clinging to his mother when she fled with him thru the branches?
Some people say also that the reason why we like to play hide-and-seek is that our ape ancestors, and our half-human ancestors, and our wild ancestors, and our half civilized ancestors, down to considerably after the time when the school histories begin, have spent no small part of their days stealing softly upon their enemies and the wild creatures they were hunting for food, or else hiding all mousey quiet while some enemy or wild beast is hunting after them.
There are a few people even who say that the reason why we like to go in swimming (we do like it, do we not?) is that in some sort of dim way we remember a still more ancient forebear who lived all the time in the water, who in short, was a veritable fish and did nothing else but swim. I don’t believe this myself. Not that we did not have such an ancestor—there doesn’t seem to be much doubt about that. But it all happened so very, very long ago that it doesn’t seem possible that there should be any trace of those days left. Still who can tell?
At any rate, we like to do a vast number of things that our forebears had to do whether they liked them or not; and if you can think of any other reason than this why you like baseball and hide-and-seek and climbing and dolls, I wish you would tell me.
XIV
Animals’ Games
Now that we know why boys play with balls and bats, and girls play with dolls, let us see if we can make out why kittens play with strings and puppies bark after wagons.
Perhaps you have already guessed. The grown up house cat and wild cat get a living all or in part by hunting birds and mice. They crouch close to the ground, creep slowly upon their prey; then seize it with a rush. That is just what the kitten does when you drag some small object slowly across the floor. The kitten doesn’t know why it chases a spool on a string. Really, however, it is playing at hunting small creatures, as its ancestors have hunted them in reality for a million generations.
Puppies are different from kittens. They don’t care much about spools and strings; but they like to run about over the fields and chew up their owner’s shoes. Now the wild dogs, and their cousins the wolves, do not go out alone and hunt small animals as the cats do. They go in packs; and they hunt large animals, wild sheep, wild oxen, deer, which they chase, sometimes, for days at a time. Spools and strings, therefore, are too small potatoes for the puppy; he chases wagons, automobiles and trolley cars, playing he is hunting big game. He doesn’t creep up cautiously on a ball of yarn, not to frighten it. Instead he barks at the top of his voice to call the rest of the pack. He runs away to play with other dogs, because the dogs and wolves are social animals; and when he chews up a rubber boot, he is playing that the pack has killed a moose and he is gnawing the great leg bone.
Of course, the puppy and the kitten do not know that they are playing at hunting when they chase spools and bark at carriages, any more than a boy knows why he likes to climb trees or hit a ball with a bat. But you can see for yourselves that the difference between the play of puppies and the play of kittens is just the difference between the work of a grown cat who hunts small creatures alone, and the work of a grown up dog who hunts large creatures in company.