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Marc Bekoff examines fascinating questions about non-human animals and their play and joy, including whether some species have more fun than others and if it is possible for a creature to experience too much joy.

Do Dogs Enjoy Playing More Than Cats, Rats, or Dolphins?
From Marc Bekoff, Ph.D., PsychologyToday.com
January 2026

Images from Canva

Key points

• Joy can be viewed as a unifying principle that links many different disciplines and categories of behavior.


• Too much joy can be maladaptive and result in risks that can be life-threatening or fatal.


• Measuring joy ultimately is tricky due to individual differences.

I chose the title for this piece for a number of reasons that will become apparent below. It's no surprise that because I've been thinking about positive emotions and feelings for a long time, often focusing on play behavior, I began thinking about different reasons why joy has evolved—what's it good for—rather than if it has evolved. Some hardline skeptics still aren't sure, but this simply means they're not keeping up with comparative scientific research on joy and having fun, a topic to which an entire issue of the journal Current Biology was devoted. Another important up-to-date source is an excellent essay published a few days ago, titled "Animals experience joy. Scientists want to measure it" by Amber Dance.

Bursts of joy as a unifying principle

Thinking about joy as a unifying principle brings together a lot of data and ideas from different—sometimes surprising and unexpected—areas of study. This is clear for nonhumans and humans, something I learned from an interview I did with Lybi Ma about her recent book, How to Be Less Miserable: End the Negative Mind Loops and Find Joy.

What is joy? Here, I'm using a working definition of joy offered by my long-time colleague, Dr. Colin Allen. Dance writes:

"To keep it simple, Allen and his colleagues have focused on a strict definition of joy as an intense, brief, positive emotion triggered by some event, such as encountering a favorite food or a reunion with a friend. That kind of 'woohoo!' moment seemed easier to assess than, say, ongoing mild contentment. Even with a strict definition, the researchers are contending with variations in joy triggers and responses from one animal to the next, including within the same species or group."

There are some common elements linking joy across different and diverse species, and Dance offers a good number of examples, including parrots making snowballs while making playful “warble calls” that are contagious, like human giggle fits, that trigger joy, dolphins leaping through water, blowing bubble rings, and playing catch with seaweed.

The idea of viewing joy as a unifying principle bringing together somewhat of a potpourri of ideas from studies of play and other activities seems like a very reasonable idea. What caught my attention in the title of Dance's piece, and why I chose my title for this essay, centers on the idea and challenge of measuring joy. Let's consider a few areas of research in which ideas about joy and how and why it evolved can be used. Building on Dance's examples, I'll say a few words about play behavior.

Play behavior

Numerous diverse animals play, and it surely seems to be something they enjoy.¹ Play also is serious business. Across species, individuals ask others to play using a set of fairly play-specific movements such as the "play bow," various vocalizations, and odors that send the message, "I want to play with you." When dogs and other animals play, it's clear they're enjoying it and often will play to exhaustion, rest—sometimes for only a few seconds—and go at it again.

Top left: Two dogs, Molly (left) and Charlotte, playing tug-of-war. This game went on for more than five minutes and was interspersed with social and self-play. Top right: Three dogs (left to right), Yekeela, Charlotte, and Molly, playing, during which they rapidly changed positions and used a variety of actions including bows, biting accompanied by head shaking, and body slamming. Bottom left: Ruby (left) performing a play bow in front of Scone. Bottom right: Scone (right) mounting Ruby. Top left: Two dogs, Molly (left) and Charlotte, playing tug-of-war. This game went on for more than five minutes and was interspersed with social and self-play. Top right: Three dogs (left to right), Yekeela, Charlotte, and Molly, playing, during which they rapidly changed positions and used a variety of actions including bows, biting accompanied by head shaking, and body slamming. Bottom left: Ruby (left) performing a play bow in front of Scone. Bottom right: Scone (right) mounting Ruby. Source: Marc Bekoff

Across species, play rarely escalates into true aggression. There are signals, including those used to initiate play, that are used to send the message, "I'm sorry I bit or hit you so hard; I still want to play." Research shows that individuals who violate the Golden Rules of Play often apologize for their transgressions. Fair play requires dogs and other animals to stick to mutually agreed-upon codes of conduct. When nonhumans and young humans feel safe and trust their playmates, it's more fun.

Dogs and other animals also playfully tease one another when they play, and some animals goof off and play for the hell of it simply because it feels good. The importance of joy—enjoying playing—is clear, and it's one way to maintain the behavior in the repertoire of different and diverse species.

Can there be too much joy and fun on the run?

An easy answer to this question is a flat "No!" But this is too fast a reply. In essays titled "Can Animals Be Too Happy or Have Too Much Fun?" and "A Cross-Species Comparative Approach to Positive Emotion Disturbance," Dr. June Gruber and I discuss this question, and the simple answer is, yes, it's possible that having too much joy can have negative consequences. Evolutionary biology also comes into the picture regarding this query, so we discuss different sorts of natural selection that bear on this and other questions.^2,3

Do dogs enjoy playing more than cats, rats, or dolphins?

The simplest answer for this question is: Some do, some don't, and for others, it depends on the situation at hand. However, and more importantly, this question centers on whether joy can be measured and how and what it means.

Dance discusses this question in some detail, but I have a few concerns. While amounts of joy may be somehow quantified for individuals belonging to different species, I'm not sure what that means on the ground. I don't think comparisons between species are especially useful, and differences among members of the same species would offer limited information. Simply put, Joe, a dog, might be totally content with a joy level of three, whereas other dogs might be as content with a joy level of one.

Within all species, differences would be expected in the amount of joy each individual needs. For example, those who need less joy might seek it out less, yet be just as joyful as those who need more. Personally, I need less joy to remain a hard-core optimist than many of my friends do, but this doesn't mean anything other than there are individual differences that need to be taken into account. So questions like the one in my title, while interesting, are fairly meaningless in the big picture.

Future studies on feelings of "woo-hoo"

This is a very exciting and important area for cross-disciplinary research, connecting people who never would have imagined working together, like June Gruber and me. The same set of questions can be asked across species, including humans, and what might seem to be silly queries, such as "Can there really be too much joy?" aren't all that silly at all.

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References

1) Bekoff, Marc. The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy―and Why They Matter. New World Library, 2024; Animal Play Is Fun, Fair, Chaotic, and Serious Business; Dogs at Play: How and Why Bowing Came to Mean "Let's Play"; When Dogs Play, They Follow the Golden Rules of Fairness; Dogs Just Wanna Have Fun: Birds, Fish, and Reptiles Too; The Power of Play: Dogs Just Want to Have Fun; Goofing Off: Psychological & Physical Benefits of Having Fun; Do Animals Play for the Hell of It? Watch This Fox; Dogs Engage in Playful Teasing to Play Fair and Have Fun; Do Animals Play Just for Fun? Watch this Dog

2) There are very few detailed and comparative data (field or otherwise) that are directly related to these questions. Based on a field study of Golden Marmots in Pakistan's Khunjerab National Park, UCLA biologist Daniel Blumstein suggested that play might expose individuals to predation. In his book Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation, Cambridge University's Patrick Bateson mentions Macquarie University's Rob Harcourt's data showing that Southern fur seals are more likely to be killed by Southern sea lions when playing in the sea than at other times perhaps because they are more conspicuous and less vigilant. Eighty-five percent of the sea lions observed to be killed were killed while playing in shallow water. University of Idaho biologist John Byers reports on a few field studies that show that play can be risky including observations of young lambs falling to their death while playing. Joel Berger, who teaches at Colorado State University, observed young bighorn sheep running into cacti and when I was with Joel at his field site outside of Palm Desert, California, I saw a young sheep run shoulder-first into a cactus and scream unrelentingly. Of course, loud vocalizations could attract predators. Tim Caro, at the University of California, Davis, noted that when young cheetahs play it reduces the hunting success of mothers. Despite these observations, the comparative database is very scant, yet there clearly are risks when animals are playing and having too much fun.

These questions lead to the general questions, "Does natural selection actually work to curtail limits of happiness and fun? Are there costs to being too happy or having too much fun?" Of course, part of growing up and becoming a card-carrying member of one's species involves taking risks, but can being too happy or having too much fun actually incur significant and long-lasting costs? We really don't know.

Much more research is needed to determine if animals can be too happy or have too much fun that is costly to them. While I've been pondering these questions literally every day since meeting Dr. Gruber, it came to me that an answer might lie by invoking what is called "stabilizing selection", "a type of natural selection in which genetic diversity decreases and the population mean stabilizes on a particular trait value" (for more on stabilizing selection please see).

3) For more on possible risks and costs to play see Robert Fagen's Animal Play Behavior, Animal Play: Evolutionary, Comparative, and Ecological Perspectives edited by John Byers and myself, Gordon Burghardt's The Genesis of Animal Play, and Sergio and Vivien Pellis's The Playful Brain.

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About the Author

Marc Bekoff, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Online: marcbekoff.com, X

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Article originally published on PsychologyToday.com:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/202601/do-dogs-enjoy-playing-more-than-cats-rats-or-dolphins

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: January 25, 2026
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