Optimizing play for learning risky behaviour

Abstract Animals adapt their behaviour to current environmental conditions to enhance survival and reproductive success. While long-term adaptation occurs through evolutionary processes acting on heritable variation, individuals can also adapt within their lifetime via learning. Learning is particularly advantageous in environments that are uncertain or fluctuate across a lifespan or a few generations. However, reliance on individual learning entails a critical risk: juveniles may begin life poorly adapted, requiring costly and hazardous exploration, especially for species hunting dangerous prey. We explore how early-life learning in protected environments, such as those buffered by parental care, can facilitate behavioural adaptation in riskier adult contexts. Using reinforcement learning, grounded in dopaminergic reward circuits, we model decision-making in a predator hunting both safe and dangerous prey. Our results show that juvenile experiences can generalize to distinct adult environments when sufficient structural similarity exists between them. This framework helps explain phenomena such as meerkats provisioning disabled prey for pups and the benefits of extended human childhood. Our findings demonstrate that structured play or safe exploration in early life can significantly enhance learning-based adaptation to dangerous environments.