Fig. 2

Pouncing frequency is affected by sex, play partner, and age. a Males pounced more than females when in mixed-sex pairs, but not in same-sex pairs (Student’s t tests with Welch’s correction: ***p < 0.001, ns = not significant). Males increased their pouncing frequency when paired with a female relative to when paired with another male (paired t tests: ***p < 0.001). There was no change in female pouncing behavior dependent on the sex of her play partner (paired t test: ns = not significant). b Separation of pouncing behavior into individual days revealed a significant main effect of age (two-way repeated measures ANOVA) with Tukey post hoc analysis revealing increased pouncing frequency in males paired with females on PN31 relative to both PN27 and PN38 (*p < 0.05). c Comparison of play on PN32 (familiar partner) and PN33 (novel partner) did not reveal an interaction between pair type and partner familiarity (two-way repeated measures ANOVA: ns = not significant)