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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Feb 8, 2026

Peering into the Dynamics of Social Interactions: Measuring Play Fighting in Rats

Peering into the Dynamics of Social Interactions: Measuring Play Fighting in Rats

Published on: January 18, 2013

Coalitional Play Fighting and the Evolution of Coalitional Intergroup Aggression.

Michelle Scalise Sugiyama¹, Marcela Mendoza², Frances White²

¹Anthropology Department, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA. mscalise@uoregon.edu.

Human Nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.)

|July 1, 2018

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Coalitional play fighting, common in hunter-gatherer societies, utilizes motor skills essential for lethal raiding. This behavior is not a product of agricultural or industrial societies, suggesting innate human motivations for coordinated group action.

Keywords:

Coalitional play fighting Hunter-gatherers Lethal raiding Play Team sports Warfare

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Area of Science:

Human Evolutionary Psychology
Anthropology
Behavioral Ecology

Background:

Dyadic play fighting is common in many species and aids in developing fighting skills.
Humans uniquely engage in coalitional play fighting, suggesting a potential role in developing skills for group conflict.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the presence and characteristics of coalitional play fighting in hunter-gatherer societies.
To determine if this play form incorporates motor patterns used in lethal raiding.
To ascertain if coalitional play fighting is a universal human behavior or an artifact of specific societal structures.

Main Methods:

Compiled a list of motor patterns from ethnographic records associated with forager warfare.
Utilized Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas to identify 100 forager culture clusters.
Analyzed ethnographic records for descriptions of coalitional play fighting (team-based contact games).
Coded identified games for the presence of eight key motor patterns used in lethal raiding.

Main Results:

Coalitional play fighting was documented in 46 out of 100 culture clusters.
All documented instances involved at least one motor pattern used in lethal raiding.
A significant majority (39/46) incorporated four or more of the eight predicted motor patterns.
Evidence suggests coalitional play fighting is widespread across diverse hunter-gatherer groups.

Conclusions:

Coalitional play fighting is a prevalent behavior in hunter-gatherer cultures globally.
This type of play actively recruits motor skills relevant to lethal raiding.
The findings support the hypothesis that coalitional play fighting is an evolved human behavior, not solely a product of recent societal developments.