Do Animals Show Off?

An essay by Nicola Davis called "Cool Leaf! Study Records Chimp Showing Off Object in Human-Like Way" with the subtitle "Adult ape sharing information and just wanted mother to look at foliage with no motive otherwise, scientists say" caught my eye. I also received a number of emails about it, many asking what I thought of the study. I told them I think it's important but takes too narrow a view of "showing off."

Davis begins, "Chimpanzees show each other objects just for the sake of it, researchers have found, revealing it isn’t only humans who like to draw attention to items that have captured their interest." The rest of her essay discusses this observation and what others had to say about it from a nonhuman primate perspective.^.1

Davis was writing about an open-access report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Claudia Wilke and her colleagues titled "Declarative Referential Gesturing in a Wild Chimpanzee (Pan Troglodytes)."

Summarizing an observation of an adult female chimpanzee, Fiona, showing her mother, Sutherland, a leaf, the researchers wrote,

Our observations suggest that in highly specific social conditions, wild chimpanzees, like humans, may use referential showing gestures to direct others’ attention to objects simply for the sake of sharing. The difference between humans and our closest living relatives in this regard may be quantitative rather than qualitative, with ramifications for our understanding of the evolution of human social cognition.²

Do Animals Other Than Nonhuman Primates "Show Off"?

The narrow primato-centric or primato-chauvinistic view of "showing off"—ape exceptionalism—ignores the strong likelihood that nonhuman animals (animals) other than primates also "show off" to share information or as part of game-playing. Some of the emails I received included stories of animals, especially dogs, doing this, which is not surprising because so many people live with and closely observe what their canine companions are doing.

Source: Karolina Grabowska/Pexels

To get a better handle on the taxonomy of "showing off," I asked 50 people with dogs, "Do you think your dog shows off?" Forty-seven emphatically said, "Yes," and three said, "I'm not sure, but they sure act as if they are." No one said "No."

Five cat guardians said they thought cats "show off." It's also possible that "showing off" might be associated or conflated with having a sense of humor. Eight people pointed this out, and the two possibilities aren't mutually exclusive. "Showing off" also has something to say about nonhumans having a Theory of Mind (ToM): "If I do this, I know what you'll be thinking or feeling."

Some Observations of Dogs “Showing Off” to People and Other Dogs

I'm using the phrase "showing off" to mean "to display proudly" or "to seek to attract attention by conspicuous behavior," the latter of which is what the researchers meant by the phrase "referential communication." Whether or not other animals display pride is still hotly debated. While others and I think they do, we don't know for sure, and this isn't what is at issue here.³

Here are some of the many stories I've received.

• Jack runs around the house when people are there and if they don't pay him any attention he picks up a toy and runs up to someone, lifts his head, and then prances away.
• Monica has this habit of bugging people when they aren't paying attention to her. She picks up a toy or a piece of food, rapidly runs up to them, skids to a stop, looks up at their face/eyes, and even if they don't move toward her or away from her she immediately turns and prances off as if saying, "Look what I have, and it's mine, not yours."
• My dog Jethro and his canine friends had free rein to run around near my mountain home when I was there to know what they were up to. I used to enrich their daily lives by burying small bits of food in the grassy fields around my house, and they would spend upwards of an hour looking for the treats before settling down. On a number of occasions, Jethro or his buddies Zeke, Maddy, Zoe, or Lolita would find a morsel and if the others were looking elsewhere or resting, one of them would parade in front of the other dogs, step away, and look back to see if they were looking at them. When they were paying attention to the dog who found food, say, Jethro, he would step away and try to get one or more of them to follow or chase him, and often play and zoomies ensued. On a number of occasions, cached food was shared and they then went about their own business.
• I have numerous stories of dogs picking up a stick or a ball and using it to get other dogs to chase them, sometimes playing keep-away and sometimes sharing the item.
• In my long-term study of wild coyotes, I saw youngsters and adults doing what I and my field assistants called "showing off," in the same manner that dogs do. They would parade around with a bone or part of a carcass in their mouth and when others paid them attention, they would run away or, on some occasions, share the food.

A Taxonomy of "Showing Off"

I wrote this post because a good number of people asked me to and also because there is no reason to think that animals other than humans and nonhuman primates don't engage in "showing off." I imagine that when "showing off" behavior is systematically studied, a taxonomy of this behavior will include a broad spectrum of nonhumans, all of whom have the cognitive capacity "to know what they're doing," perhaps especially socially-living animals.

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I look forward to more research on this important and interesting topic, the result of which being that we won't have to put scare quotes around showing off anymore.

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A note from Neva Davis about her cat Obi:

With dogs, I find it hard to tell if they are showing off when they prance around holding a toy, or if they are trying to entice the other dogs to chase them to initiate play. But I do see this behavior of getting the toy (or other desired object, even a stick) and prancing around with it in front of the other dogs. I contrast this to times when they really want to keep something to themselves. In those cases, they usually grab it and slink away from the other dogs, so they won't have to share.

However, one incident with a cat struck me as blatant showing off. This cat has since passed away, but his name was Obi. This was during a time when we had about six cats in the house, including our companions, some fosters, and some ferals from the local colony who were recuperating from injury (who ended up staying inside forever actually, but we didn't know that yet). Anyway, a cicada got inside the house and all the cats, even the elderly ones, gave chase. Every single cat wanted to catch the cicada. Obi caught the cicada and then pranced around, up and down the halls, showing every other cat that he had the cicada. He showed off to us, making sure we saw, and then dashing off before we could take the bug away from him. I don't think he was trying to initiate play, since the cats never really play fought over an object, and he did this routine even with cats he didn't really get along with or were so old they never played with him.

LinkedIn/Facebook image: Jaromir Chalabala/Shutterstock