Play, Personhood, and Fergus the Relentless

Are animals people? Theologians have scoffed at the notion as heretical: humans are numinous, animals savage. Behaviorists warn that warm feelings will cause us to misunderstand the ways animals live and react. (Do not pet the fuzzy grizzly you meet in Yellowstone.) Hunters fervently dismiss the thought as ridiculous and extreme. Bioethicist Jessica Pierce cautions that it is a mistake to apply the concept personhood to other animals. “The concept of personhood,” she writes, “should be introduced only when we are trying to solve purely human questions.”

Are Humans Exceptional?

We cannot expect a dolphin to keep a bowling score, a squirrel to calculate cube roots, or a river otter to follow Taylor Swift on TikTok. Still, the time-honored idea that humans are exceptional has begun to falter on the grounds that it is both ill-informed and self-interested.

Neuroscientists point to the close (or identical) similarity of neural structures and neurochemistry among mammals. Ethologists note how social animals express ranges of emotions—including loyalty, love, longing, chagrin, grief, mutual trust, and laughter—that seem very like ours. And closer to a shared experience, dog-lovers sense self-awareness, sentience, and loving sentiment in their best friends.

Which Brings Us to Play

We also share a keen appetite and a basic aptitude for play with a long list of non-human animals. Rats wrestle and laugh, dolphins frolic, squirrels tirelessly scamper, river otters romp, and so on throughout the peaceable kingdom. If “play makes us human” as the evolutionary psychologist Peter Gray reasonably maintains, then it is a small step to inquire not whether animals are “people” as such, (because the term itself proves misleading) but whether the deep play history we share with other mammals puts “humanity” roughly on par with “dolphinity,” or “squirrelocity,” or in the case of restless river otters, let’s call it “romposity.”

A Case in Point: Playing with Fergus the Relentless

Our double-doodle keeps only a few things top of mind—warning us of the intruding mail carrier (his bark reliably chases her away every morning), the quest for a treat, the duty to shoo an errant backyard goose, and the need for a satisfying nap each afternoon. But one desire surpasses all others, the insistent invitation to play.

For Fergus the Relentless, the day begins with a play bow, a universal signal among dogs. If you haven’t seen the gesture—front paws outstretched, head tilted, tail alert, quizzical expression upturned—look for it. The posture means that it’s time for play. Other dogs immediately understand it even when we humans don’t. Play heads off aggression.

For Fergus the Relentless, any time is a good time for play. He develops and draws on an extensive vocabulary for play. For Fergus the Relentless and, it seems, for dogs in general, nouns denote action.

For Dogs, Nouns Are Verbs

Thus “ring” uttered with some urgency means both “go find your ring” (a powder blue chew that provocatively rolls) with the built-in inference “let’s play with the ring.” When flipped, the ring bounces unpredictably, like furtive prey would, and this is exciting. So is chewing on the rubbery toy.

When the chewing is done, the game turns into a demand. If it’s fun to retrieve the rolling ring once, well, isn’t it even more fun to retrieve it a few dozen more times? Yes, on the human end, tirelessness can become tiresome. When told to “go away, please,” he’s back with Ring in a few seconds with a look that seems to say, “how about now?!”

Donkey, Ring, and Cow favorite toys of Fergus the Relentless

Source: Photo Courtesy Scott Eberle (2024)

Or sometimes the play object is Donkey” Donkey is also fun to fetch. “Go get Donkey!” is all the invitation Fergus needs. But Donkey also has two stout cotton ropes knotted at each end and conveniently threaded through. When Fergus the Relentless retrieves Donkey, he is reluctant to yield it for another toss. Donkey is made for a game of tugging. Resistance is fruitful. So tenacious is his hold on Donkey that Fergus the Relentless will consent to be lifted off his feet, meanwhile sounding a pleased, muffled “!arnararuuönphn!”

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“Blue Cow” calls for a variation. Blue Cow comes with legs so stubby that they don’t afford much purchase, and so tugging is fleeting and Blue Cow is willingly surrendered. But Blue Cow makes a pleasing but most un-cowlike squeak when chomped. To our ears and perhaps to his, the squeak sounds like the piping that a real-life bunny made when Fergus retrieved it from a nest in the thick ivy growing near our backyard fence. (I’ll let you imagine the comical skit with us humans running about trying to get it back--cue Yakety Sax as background music.) Fergus eventually gave the little thing up unharmed. His soft retriever’s mouth left not a scratch. The same cannot be said of the neighborhood cats, alas.

In a final instance, Red Ball shows how closely the predatory instinct travels with the playful impulse. Red Ball is actually three spheres smooshed together like the Michelin Man. When thrown, it rebounds high and low, left and right, or back and forth. Retrieving Red Ball in three dimensions takes some doing. But the challenge is fun. What America’s baby doctor, Benjamin Spock, once concluded of humans is also true of our loyal mutts: We all play not because it is easy but because it is hard.

Are Dogs Persons?

In her fascinating study The Animal Mind (2024), the philosopher Kristen Andrews notes a similar instance. One pooch tugged a Flexible Flyer by its rope up a snowy slope, mounted the sled, and rode it down, again and again. The dog was not prompted by mere, blind instinct, the way an ant will follow a formic trail. The dog was consciously, intentionally, and originally, pursuing glee.

A game of fetch, tugging, keep-away, or chasing, calls upon more complex thinking. The dog must understand what is on his playmate’s mind. Though we last shared a common ancestor a hundred million years ago, the dog must grasp our intention to play and must trust in our willingness to play fairly. Remarkably, Fergus the Relentless and his fellows routinely and confidently estimate our strategies and limitations in playing.

With the play signal deployed and received, and the game pursued, we see the hallmarks of personal consciousness. These remarkable episodes of cross-species understanding are not purely human matters and hence seem not so exceptional after all.