Yet, while we may question the truth of the proposition that these mischievous actions are enjoyed as practical jokes—in the way in which Uncle Remus represents them—we need not hesitate to attribute to animals a simple form of the child’s sense of fun. This trait appears most plainly in the pastimes of the young of many familiar species, including our two domestic pets, pastimes which are quite correctly described as animal play. The particular forms of this playful activity, the tusslings, the attacks and retreats on both sides, the chasings and the rest, are pretty certainly determined by special instincts.[89] But, as play, these actions are an expression of high spirits and of something analogous to a child’s love of “pretending”. Is it not a bit of playful make-believe, for example, when a dog, on seeing the approach of a canine stranger, “lies low” wearing the look of an alert foe; yet, as soon as the stranger approaches, “gives {159} away the show” by entering with an almost disgraceful celerity into perfectly friendly relations with him? It is the same when a dog teases another dog by startling him, showing signs of enjoying the trick. H. M. Stanley writes: “My dog took the same delight in coming up quietly behind a small dog and giving a terrifying bark as does the child in jumping out from a corner and crying ‘boo’”.[90] Owing, to no little extent, perhaps, to the fact of its education by man, the dog gives much the clearest indications of a sense of fun. No one can observe a dog during a walk with his child-comrades without noting how readily he falls in with their playful proposals. The infectiousness of an announcement of the playful temper is clearly illustrated here. The dog imitates the gambols, and will even seem to respond to the vocal outbursts of his merry playmates. Darwin has rightly recognised a germ of our “sense of humour” in a dog’s joining in the game of stick-throwing. You throw a bit of stick for him to fetch, and having picked it up he proceeds to carry it away some distance and to squat down with it on the ground just before him. You then come quite close as if to take the stick from him, on which he seizes it and bears it off exultingly, repeating the little make-believe with evident enjoyment.[91] I have tested a dog again and again when playing with him in this fashion, and have satisfied myself that he is in the play-mood, and knows perfectly well that you are too; so that if you pretend to be serious and to command him in your most magisterial voice to give up the stick he sidles up with a hollow show of obedience which could impose on nobody, as if to say, “I know better: you are not really serious; so I am going on with the game”. All {160} the notes of a true sense of fun seem to be present in this case: the gay and festive mood, a firm resolve _desipere in loco_, and a strong inclination to play at “pretending”.