Polar Bear playing with a Sled Dog in Manitoba

I came across today with these 2006 pictures by German wildlife photographer Norbert Rosing (National Geographic) that travels regularly to Hudson Bay in Manitoba, Canada to photograph Polar Bears.

During that specific trip, Mr. Rosing photographed and published (as The World of the Polar Bear) a collection of images that follows a family of Polar Bears over a year period.

Dr. Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist who specializes in the study of the evolution of human and animal play, used the images below in his presentation Animals at Play.

The interesting thin about these pictures is not the image content in itself but the interpretations of the images instead. If you make a quick search over the Internet in sites and new vehicles in different languages you will see these vehicles characterizing the act within these images as "animal play".

Animal behaviorists think differently and consider what really constitutes play is not necessarily present in animals activity, being then a more instinctive behavior.