Juvenile rough-and-tumble play predicts adult sexual behavior in American mink

Here, our predictions were the opposite of those for males, since abilities to limit the number or duration of copulations could allow females to exercise pre- or post-copulatory mate choice. In total, we observed 1669 male-female encounters, and 1004 separate copulations. As predicted, frequent juvenile R and T predicted long-lasting copulations in adult males, and also longer latencies to copulate in adult females.

This was true specifically of rough-and-tumble play itself, independently of general activity levels and, among a subset of 32 males reared in environmentally enriched housing, also independently of solitary object play. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that juvenile rough-and-tumble play predicts adult sexual behaviour in any species. Further research is required to test whether our female results can be replicated, and, importantly, to determine whether play truly has a causal role in either of these correlational relationships.