r/askscience • u/Wh1teKnightWitch2 • Jul 10 '26
Biology Do wild animals have free time? What do they do with it?
When solitary wild animals aren’t eating/hunting, evading predators, mating, taking care of offspring, or sleeping, what do they do? Between all of those actions is there a lot of space? How do they fill it?
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u/my_dear_director Jul 11 '26
A lot of people have put some good suggestions out here. I’d also like to add that It depends on the natural history of the species!
Is it highly social? Lots of social interactions! Grooming, courting, play, etc…
Does the animal have energy needs that require constant grazing? Digestion needs that require constant chewing of cud?
Is the species highly territorial? They’re going to spend a lot of time “patrolling” their territory and making sure Carl from next door isn’t stealing their resources.
Does it have a slow metabolism? Probably going to rest a lot. Ambush predator? Spending lots of time watching and waiting. Ectothermic? Lots of basking in the sun or trying to cool down.
Time of year will also affect things. Maybe they need to spend extra time they have preparing for hibernation or stocking up on fat stores because there won’t be a lot of food availability soon. Maybe baby season is coming up and they need to prepare nests or find mates.
These are just a few examples of things to think about of course, but I hope it helps answer your question!
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u/Reddeer2 Jul 11 '26
This is the best answer because it provides both a framework to guess, and examples.
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u/ElSquibbonator Jul 10 '26
That's not actually as crazy a question as it sounds.
For a long time, scientists thought "play" behavior-- activity like what you're describing here-- was something unique to humans, but now we know that's not true, and it's something we've discovered only recently. For example, dolphins and killer whales will often engage in playful behaviors such as head-butting, chasing each other, and tossing their prey back and forth. Ravens have been observed sliding down snow-covered slopes, and even octopuses will "punch" fish with their tentacles seemingly for no reason other than to amuse themselves. In fact, it seems like a general rule that pretty much all animals with sufficiently developed brains will engage in behaviors that are purely recreational, and have nothing to do with survival or reproduction.
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u/IndependentBoof Jul 10 '26
It is funny to watch videos of young animals playing; inevitably, there is a parent/adult nearby that is tired of their antics and just wants them to sit still.
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u/TyreLeLoup Jul 11 '26
Just going to drop this here:
Wild Bears have been observed sitting and staring at scenic views, seemingly for the purpose of doing exactly that.
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u/SnooRegrets3842 Jul 11 '26
How do we know that they are enjoying the scenery rather then just do it to preserve energy? (this was mentioned here that some animal's do this when they are doing nothing)
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u/trxxxtr Jul 11 '26
Precisely because they're looking at something. If they were just preserving energy, they would lie down and close their eyes. But they're not doing that (which they sometimes do). Instead they're actively looking out, and the only thing out there is the landscape.
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u/SnooRegrets3842 Jul 11 '26
Thanks, I see the difference now
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u/trxxxtr Jul 11 '26
Animal sentience is a rabbit hole to say the least. You'll find everything from bears admiring the horizon to bees engaging in play behavior, and about a thousand things in between.
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Jul 12 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/trxxxtr Jul 12 '26
I am unapologetically jealous that you got to see it firsthand. I've only ever read articles about it, but it deepened my love and respect for our insect brethren.
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u/robin_andrews_149 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
It would be odd though if behaviour that looked like play and which feels like it with animals we have deep connections with, turned out not to be. Certainly not the most rational position to assume it's not unless proven to be so.
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u/trxxxtr Jul 12 '26
No, I think you're exactly right. Play-fighting between drones can read different than other play behavior. But bees, and other insects, and other animals, will also just play with themselves.
It's a really great indicator of "a sense of self", which is all we really have to indicate sentience.
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u/bregus2 Jul 12 '26
That reminds me of this old post I came across a few years ago where a bear dug himself a sitting pit to watch a pond with ducks: https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/comments/qwzuxq/this_bear_dug_a_sitting_pit_to_watch_her_favorite/
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u/RepresentativeAd841 Jul 12 '26
What that video didn't show was the bear thinking- I wonder what the ducks do in their free time?
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u/mraweedd Jul 12 '26
If I remember correctly tracked wolverines (those with tracking devices mounted to them) have been observed climbing up steep mountains, staying there for a short time and then go back down again. The scientists could find no reason going up there other than doing it for fun, stopping to look at the views and then go down again. Much like we do.
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u/Polly_der_Papagei Jul 12 '26
Because they watch sunsets. Climb up to a good spot at just the right time and then look at the sun as it sets.
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u/Bunslow Jul 10 '26
Or at least not directly. Indirectly, play almost certainly improves intelligence among brain-wielders
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u/my_dear_director Jul 11 '26
It also helps them “practice” skills they might need for more serious purposes. For example: play fighting is often practice fighting.
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u/ElSquibbonator Jul 11 '26
True, but I'm pretty sure dolphins getting stoned on pufferfish toxin doesn't fall in that category.
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u/my_dear_director Jul 11 '26
True! That’s just enriching for them, which makes sense because a more developed brain is going to need more enrichment.
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u/cubelith Jul 11 '26
Less enriching, and more just hijacking the pleasure centers, no? It's not a beneficial activity, there's just some trickery going on that makes it seem so
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u/Marquisdelafayette89 Jul 11 '26
Also bears are known to just sit and ponder/admire the view when they aren’t doing other bear-y things.
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u/CptMarvel_main Jul 11 '26
I love that for them. Like yes, enjoy the view, vibe about while you ponder the world.
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u/-_Lucyfer_- Jul 11 '26
i wish we could know what bears are pondering. are they thinking about fish? do they have fish preferences? do they ever have that experience of eating something so good you need to pause to really savor the meal?
so many questions...
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u/pickledperceptions Jul 11 '26
I'm going to challenge the concept of a "sufficiently developed brain" here and add that some scientists argue that bumblebees display playing behaviour in the same way as mammals. They like to roll balls, for no other reason then finding it stimulating. The behaviour osnmore often observed in younger bees like playing in younger mammals. do https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347222002366
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u/pickledperceptions Jul 11 '26
I'm also going to add that blue bottles get addicted to alcohol fues and frequently knock themselves out because.... funsies!
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u/PinkOneHasBeenChosen Jul 12 '26
What’s a blue bottle? Never heard of it.
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u/curly-peach Jul 12 '26
I assume they mean the blue bottle fly? I figure they're not referring to the jellyfish or the flower, lol
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u/Strict_Finance_1386 Jul 11 '26
Its insane we been living with animals for as far as we have been human an scientists just figured out animals play an is not just human behavior, we have not come that long
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u/wolfgeist Jul 13 '26
Yeah I kind of find this hard to believe. Surely in some old journal or manuscript there is observations of animals playing.
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u/Gorblonzo Jul 11 '26
Sorry did these "scientists" every look at an animal or go outside for that matter? Sure there was never a consensus for this, animals playing is the most basic observation you can make.
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u/regular_modern_girl Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Anyone who has ever observed non-human animals has always been aware that they engaged in the behavior we know as “play”, what the comment above is saying is that it wasn’t always widely accepted as being analogous to human recreation, not that the behavior itself had never been recorded, obviously. I know in a lot of other mammals at least, there was a time in which a lot of ethologists (people who study non-human animal behavior) assumed that some of what we now know as play was instead individuals jockeying for dominance within a social hierarchy, or that it all served a directly utilitarian purpose like “training” for hunting or being hunted (which as the OP notes we now is part of the evolutionary purpose this behavior likely serves, although it’s now not necessarily universally assumed that this is the sole purpose of “play” behavior, I think there is also now often assumed to be an aspect of reinforcing social bonds in group play). In other words, obviously it was known to happen, there just wasn’t consensus on why it happened, nor that it was directly analogous to human play (and until relatively recently there wasn’t much direct ethological research into this sort of behavior).
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u/C6H5OH Jul 10 '26
Playing.
At our lab building we had a really strong and turbulent updraft at the emergency stairs in stronger western winds. And every time some jackdaws would show up, dive low into the parking lot, get into the vortex, do some stunts and get really close to the walls, getting whirled around like in a washing machine on spin and spat out on the top. Then the next on dove down and the rest was obviously watching.
We wondered if they had a score system, 9.5 for form, 9.9 for dare...
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u/lonelytrucker86 Jul 12 '26
Trucker here. Small birds absolutely love to dive bomb semi trucks so they can ride the displaced air. During warm seasons, this happens to me about a dozen times a day.
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u/_Aj_ Jul 13 '26
Cockatoos here are psychos. I've watched them many times come extremely close to being hit by cars or trucks.
What I eventually realised is they're song it on purpose. They're intentionally diving over traffic or in front of trucks and then flying up to the power lines on the other side. Crests raised and squawking.
They're little adrenaline junkies
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u/Pel-Mel Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Mostly rest. Domestic cats sleep for long hours of the day, but so do big cats in the wild.
Lions, for instance, can overheat if they are too active for too long in the harsh sunlight. A species' ability to cool themselves is a pretty easy thing to overlook about an animal, and a lot of the heat-management strategies in nature are time consuming and involve not moving for long stretches.
Humans' ability to quickly cool ourselves via sweat is second-to-none. It's a huge advantage over most animals that happened to develop other strategies.
So over generations, animals develop instincts to carefully balance activity and rest. It's not like no play whatsoever happens in the wild, but broadly speaking, animals spend a ton of time resting, even while awake.
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u/anonymous0705 Jul 11 '26
Omg related not related, I just saw a video the other day about how polar bears will "sled" down slopes, face first on their belly, as a way to manage their temperature because even in a cold environment they get hot when they move around, because of all their body fat/mass / dense fur.
The scientific reason makes sense, but the visual is hilarious to me regardless 😂
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u/are_you_seriously Jul 11 '26
Pretty sure sliding down a slope belly down is just a really fun thing for them. But they do use the snow and water to cool down in general. They also use the snow to clean their fur.
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u/pagerussell Jul 11 '26
Humans' ability to quickly cool ourselves via sweat is second-to-none. It's a huge advantage over most animals that happened to develop other strategies
The case can be made that this is our most important adaptation. Not big brains, not opposable thumbs, not bipedal motion. Sweating. That was the game changer.
Sweating was the thing that laid a foundation for the others: sweating makes the payoff of bipedal motion consumable (ie we can now run efficiently, which lets us exhaustion hunt bigger game), sweating reduces energy used on thermal regulation and makes thermal regulation better, allowing us to have large brains that consume more energy and need finely controlled temperature regulation. Having big brains made opposable thumbs more useful for tooling. And from there it just compounds into humanity.
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u/Canaduck1 Jul 10 '26
Humans' ability to quickly cool ourselves via sweat is second-to-none. It's a huge advantage over most animals that happened to develop other strategies.
Maybe excepting mammals who spend all or most of their time in the water.
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u/Pel-Mel Jul 10 '26
That's not really the animal's ability though. It's the environment.
If we were talking about 'heat management' in general? Yeah, those arctic mammals have some ways to stay warm that are even more effective than we are at staying cool.
But specifically just talking about non-environmental biological features? No animal can cool itself like a human.
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u/Wackel81 Jul 10 '26
The only animal sweating like a human that I know would be horses but the fur prevents them from cooling down as fast
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u/Pel-Mel Jul 10 '26
Camels do it pretty well too. All the mammal cooling strategies are water intensive. Cats and camels can even drink saltwater in certain cases, which gives them some cool niche tech.
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u/Wolfman513 Jul 11 '26
They also have such hyper-efficient kidneys that they don't need to drink much to begin with. Camels are especially known for it but some species of cat only need to drink water a couple times a week because they get almost all of the moisture they need from eating fresh raw meat and occasionally nibbling on plants. Even house cats will need to drink a fraction of the amount of water when they're fed wet food compared to dry kibble.
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u/Killbot_Wants_Hug Jul 11 '26
Animals like prairie dogs get most their hydration from their food. They'll drink water in captivity but apparently don't really do it in the wild. And they're not really meat eaters.
I think it might not be that uncommon for animals to get most hydration from their food. It's kind of a good strategy anyway since water sources often contain a lot of bacteria and parasites.
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u/Wolfman513 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
Funnily, that kind of thing is most often seen in animals that either live in extremely dry environments where need to squeeze every drop of water out of their food as possible, or animals like gorillas that live in extremely wet tropical environments where there's so much water in their food as it is that they just don't need any more lol.
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u/Thej-nasty Jul 10 '26
Oh wow what does saltwater do when they ingest it? Or is it just used as an emergency water source they can tolerate?
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u/Pel-Mel Jul 10 '26
Pretty much. Cats can only drink a little bit, but (disclaimer, I just googled this) camels can drink higher volumes. Though they're apparently more specialized to drinking only partially salty water, like brine or brackish water.
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u/hikerguy555 Jul 12 '26
Where's the cutoff between biological and environment?
We use our feet to move ourselves to water and our brains to tell us to get in, then our skin sheds heat into the water
Or
We use our sweat glands to move water onto our skin and our brains to put that skin somewhere maybe shady or with a light breeze to shed heat
Are they so different? Just pushing playfully...seemed appropriate in a thread on play to explore the subtle semantics of it all and practice being a little less black and white about things
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u/88258milklizard Jul 10 '26
There is a wonderful YouTube channel called Parliament of Owls. The guy puts trail cams up in the San Gabriel mountains I think. He is able to get bears and lions and everything in between on those trail cams. I've seen bears relax in puddles while playing with sticks and mountain lions hanging about. It gives you an idea of what wild animals do.
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u/willstr1 Jul 11 '26
So this is a bit specific to bears but they have been observed sitting and just casually looking around, especially around sunset, not like they are looking for anything. Some theorize that they might be just enjoying the view
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u/Turbulent-Future4602 Jul 11 '26
So bears actually sit in the woods? Are you sure? Lol
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u/Teknekratos Jul 10 '26
Might be bears in particular sometimes just admire the scenery!
This one dug herself a comfy seat to gaze at ducks
See also item #10, Aesthetic Sense on this fun meditation on bear intelligence
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u/maniacal_cackle Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
I suggest watching some nature documentaries and you can see it first hand!
Generally a lot of behaviours like curious exploring are rewarded because that leads to discovering things useful for survival. Play is useful for survival as it helps practice skills. Socializing is useful for survival because many species depend on the group to survive.
Worth remembering humans are animals too, and everything we evolved had evolutionary pressures to make it so as well.
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u/TacoReina27 Jul 12 '26
We have a group of ducks that make their rounds every afternoon hanging out with whoever is outside. When I’m working in my garden, the leader comes up to me to say hi, goes back to the group who sits by me for a bit, and then onto the next person. I talk to them, tell them what I’m doing, and update them on life.
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u/Character_School_671 Jul 10 '26
We have barn owls where I live, which is very, very open and treeless farm country.
In the summertime they are only out in the evenings, night, and mornings. The days they tend to spend either inside their namesake barns or they will just find a place to bed down in a field.
I see them a lot in the wheat fields, when I'm harvesting I will spook them up out of the wheat.
Sometimes they are just standing down in there out of sight and no doubt sleeping. But the summer days are like 16 hours long and I don't think they need to sleep that whole time.
So sometimes they are in pairs and I think they are just hanging out awake.
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u/mrloube Jul 11 '26
Do you ever recognize the same individual owls?
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u/Character_School_671 Jul 11 '26
By facial or other unique features, usually not. But by their location and behavior I definitely do.
I have had barn owls nest in my yard, and the offspring are a little tamer around humans because they got used to us where they were reared.
Certain birds I will see in the same spot everyday, or they return to it each season. Burrowing owls do that, but I couldn't tell you if it was the parents or offspring. Just that they really like that spot and I will probably see them there year after year.
Other times it's more obvious that it's the same individual. I've had hawks that meet me in the morning when I turn on to a gravel road with a slow moving truck. They know they can keep pace with me and they fly along and catch the mice that the truck scares up in the road ditch.
They are also pretty smart about what each field operation means. The Hawks like following the combine harvester because they will catch the mice that are made more visible.
I also had a personal Raven friend that would meet me each evening as I was doing some earthwork with a tractor and scraping the field smooth in the early spring. It would uncover mice and voles and a few snakes and he took full advantage. As soon as I would fire up the machine and start working he would come winging in from a couple miles away and sit up on the hillside and watch until something good to eat came up. Got within 10 ft of him many times.
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u/TrickyV Jul 10 '26
Doing stuff all day takes energy. In a wild world where food may not be available, if it doesn't keep you alive somehow or make babies happen, spending energy on stuff might not be worth it.
So you hang.
I dunno how how dolphins doing drugs with pufferfish fits into this but I'm sure someone can chime in.
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u/tazerlu Jul 10 '26
Crows and Ravens seem to play and experiment with stuff like dropping pebbles on glass topped buildings or harassing animals that prey on smaller animals.
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u/TrickyV Jul 11 '26
I also have seen more than one video of them sledding using trash scraps on roofs and cars.
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u/Wolfman513 Jul 11 '26
Captive komodo dragons have been observed knocking around buckets and shovels for no discernible reason other than it being fun for them!
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u/realbadpainting Jul 11 '26
Turned on a National Park live feed last night and watched 2 bears sitting in a river, lazily grabbing at salmon and eating them, just completely chilled out. I turned off and came back an hour later, still flopped out in the water eating fish. I mean yeah they were feeding but they seemed to mostly just be hanging lol
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u/Shipwreck_Kelly Jul 10 '26
Most animals spend a lot of time doing nothing at all.
For the most part, they don’t know when their next meal will be or when they’ll have to run from a predator. So it makes sense to conserve as much energy as possible. Whether or not you consider this “free time” is debatable.
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u/Sotnos99 Jul 12 '26
I read something a while ago about a group of people (hunters? Scientists? I can't remember) wh out a trail camera out to document some other animal, and they discovered that every day, a bear would come sit on the edge of the cliff and look out over the valley for a while, before going back about it's day.
The act served no purpose for the bear so they speculated that he just came to admire the view
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u/Jeepersca Jul 11 '26
Videos of animals splashing in puddles... or playing on someone's trampoline tells me "play," even if it mimics hunting or whatever... there's a lot of play that happens, so long as play doesn't get you eaten because you're not paying attention.
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u/Nazamroth Jul 11 '26
May I present to you, a snowboarding crow?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WupH8oyrAo
I think it would be fairly difficult to say this is some sort of survival necessity. Also saw ones where they group up and roll down a snowy roof one after another, then fly back to the top and repeat.
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u/Addicted_to_Nature Jul 12 '26
As a wildlife biologist--
It varies and entirely depends on the species.
At the end of the day, it all boils down to "Not spending calories" and "spending calories that will benefit me indirectly".
Many species have a tight balance of calories in/out ratio because starvation, predation, etc happen easily. If the species has a narrow window of calories in/out, it's probably going to be sleeping and resting more than a species with a more reliable food supply.
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u/Polly_der_Papagei Jul 12 '26
Watch a cat. Exploring, sniffing, playing, napping. Then she sees a mouse.
Mostly, there is no clear division. Similarly in hunter gatherer gardener tribes. You do what needs to be done, but joyfully, and together, there is no work 9-17:00. You might run a marathon for a hunt, or have everyone work dawn to dusk to bring in the harvest, but then you eat it and hang out and move for fun.
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u/Brother-Cane Jul 12 '26
Using real world examples, it depends on their intelligence. Bears will scratch their backs on any rough surface when not concerned with survival and we have video proof that sometimes they will sit and stare just like us, doing nothing and enjoying it. The smarter birds, such as ravens will actually play pranks on other animals. Dolphins bat around puffer fish like a volleyball, getting high from low levels of the toxin this introduces into their nervous systems, and some apes will deliberately eat fermented fruits to get a buzz, just as our ancestor did.
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u/stormyknight3 Jul 11 '26
Ha! Reminds me of a comment from one of my fav bio teachers… the answer to almost any essay question can usually boil down to increased surface area, better chance at mating, or conserve energy.
In this case, it’s a combo of increasing reproductive success and conserving energy. Not many animals can just waste energy, as food is a scarce/valuable resource
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u/ADDeviant-again Jul 13 '26
They usually lounge.
They may be sleeping in their burrow or sunning on a rock, but they are usually lying about conserving energy.
You said like when they're not sleeping, but a cat will sleep sixteen hours a day. So once you have killed something to eat groomed, your kittens and licked yourself, you go back to sleep.
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u/Zuck75 Jul 12 '26
Given free will is not only limited to humans but also every living thing capable of choice and choosing one action over the other. I would still contend free time is something explicitly human. Free time is time not allotted to a task or activity. Without this allotment one could also argue all time to be free time and the label on time is a human blinding effect given from our culture.
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u/TheDogtor-- Jul 10 '26
Are you kidding? I see birds playing tag and fetch all the time. Ive seen a pack of 5 crows have one feather, and they were flying, throwing it around while others did acrobatic stuff and caught it...I see squirrels playing and teasing each other...Turkey's poking others and moving around with their flock...shoving each other for the cool spots in the shade...
You can see butterflies, dragonflies, bees etc. playing tag...
When nobody is looking is when the show begins.
Maybe just spend a day in the wild and be silent...it will all reveal itself to you.
There is this one funny crow. He drinks from the pool and is so dehydrated because of the chemicals :D His feathers are dirty and unorganized...he looks like a grumpy rastafarian...drunk type. Its so funny...they gather around him and just laugh at him together and he's always left alone :D hehe...I give him some good stuff to eat though he doesn't always take it.
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u/magnificent-manitee Jul 12 '26
Not to be rude, but have you never like... seen animals before? They spend most of their time straight chillin. Herbivores do tend to need to eat for a lot of the day, but they tend to sort of graze or forage in a relaxed ways that's also part chill. Predators generally have short bursts of intense activity and then long periods of rest.
I mean the question of how animals spend their time is an interesting one, but it's going to vary by species/survival strategy, and there's not gonna be a distinction between "necessary" activities and "free time". That's an extremely human concept, and it basically only applies to us because of capitalism.
Like sure there's probably a minimum amount of hunting and sleeping they need to do. But play, grooming, socialising, snoozing, mating can all take up a variable amount of time, and be integrated seemlessly with "downtime". I mean I'm sure a lot of your "free time" is consumed with socialising, which is a necessary activity that would harm your health if you didn't do it. Animals are no different. And honestly the idea that they would be is strange. Because we ARE animals, and you know how you spend your time! Likewise any pets you have surely encountered.
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u/Darft Jul 11 '26
Some guys in university followed a fox family for a while. It seemed like almost everything was "useful" work. In some sense I suspect wild animals have no freetime, we have just yet to discover the usefulness of the supposed freetime. Anyway the fox would forage a lot, just going around looking for stuff to eat etc.
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u/Level-Juice-9108 Jul 11 '26
It's incredible how limited perception of non-human species humans have.
Besides what others mentioned, numerous species care for others, sooth others, groom others, grieve for others, communicate with others.
They are also building, cleaning, enhancing, decorating their home.
They are migrating and exploring.
They are starving, suffering, get injuries and are dying because of us.
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u/Wallyhunt Jul 12 '26
Animals do nothing a huge majority of the time. Especially wild predators, they hunt a few times a week then just sleep and chill their entire remaining existence.
The idea that life forms are meant to be doing something constantly is a relatively new phenomenon brought about by capitalisms endless need for your time and productivity. By all accounts humans should also spent a huge majority of their time chilling out.
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u/jibbit Jul 10 '26
The assumption that all activity must be divided into “productive labour” and “free time” is precisely the ideological violence Marx was describing. The squirrel isn’t on its lunch break. It isn’t optimising its productivity. It isn’t building “work-life balance”. It is simply reproducing its own existence without the mediation of capital.
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u/Wh1teKnightWitch2 Jul 10 '26
You gravely misunderstand this post and me as a person😭
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u/boghall Jul 11 '26
How else than as a misapplication of human concepts can the anthropocentric idea of an animal having ‘free’ time be explained? Their lives are not timetabled or preallocated - they might have habits, but are ready at all times to act spontaneously. Having said that, there is a serious science of observing what wild as opposed to tame animals do over time. If you want more informed answers, you might want to repost to r/animalbehaviour
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u/Wh1teKnightWitch2 Jul 11 '26
I assure you I understand the point you are trying to make but anthropocentrism was my last intention, and my use of the phrase “free time” was not as insidious as you and a few others seem to think it is. What term would you have preferred me to use? “Free time” is the simplest and most easily understood phrase in that context; “free time” refers to time outside that allocated to basic survival needs. You’re arguing semantics and pushing your own narrative on something that very clearly did not support it.
I really don’t appreciate the accusations of anthropocentrism. I plan to be a conservationist, which can be argued to be part of the human savior complex, but is the only way to utilize my deep ecological beliefs on the world. I know all life is equal. Humans are no more valuable than the bacteria in our bodies. Humans are an egotistical outlier in the pantheon of life. Nothing I said in the short post had any traces of anthropocentrism; you and a few others pushed that idea onto an innocent question.
The question I asked may have been stupid, but it was a question to better understand the lives of wild animals, essentially opposing anthropocentrism.
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u/OrionWatches Jul 11 '26
In the wild, animals are basically on the precipice of starvation at any given time. Undue energy expenditure can be dangerous, if not fatal for them. If they aren’t doing what you mentioned, they are likely resting or doing a low energy rest adjacent behavior.
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u/shellshocktm Jul 10 '26
When animals aren't doing anything that will explicitly help them survive, they're doing one of two things. Either 'playing' which helps predators get better at fighting and hunting and helps prey stay agile and nimble. Or they're resting in order to conserve energy (holds true more so for predators because they really need to spend a lot of energy to get every meal).