They do. Especially juveniles.

Human are special (but not unique) in that they keep juvenile features well into adulthood. A phenomenon called neoteny. Playfulness is part of it, and what is playfulness if it isn't "pushing yourself", both are an "unnecessary" expendure of energy.

Also, animals do all sorts of crazy stuff to attract mates.

So yes, humans may be crazy, but they are not the only crazy species on earth. And even if it isn't, that craziness made us quite successful.

Something being natural doesn’t make it good by itself. This fallacy is known as the „appeal to nature“:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

Beside that: how would we know that wild animals aren’t actually pushing themselves in some way?

That's not a fair representation in my opinion. Appeal to nature is saying cyanide is healthy because it's natural.

But when it's our own evolutionary biology, I think appeal to nature makes perfect sense. It's what we were born to do, literally. Antidepressants and stimulant drugs allow us to bypass this evolution, but at some cost.

> Do wild animals "push" themselves? No. So theres your answer.

Have you ever watched squirrels go after food in a feeder? Lots of YT videos of people setting up insane obstacle courses that squirrels learn to run through.

Some breeds of dogs are infamous for how hard they work, collies being one.

Heck some species, such as salmon, rely on do or die as the very key of their survival.

But we already have big macs for $2, that's the difference. When squirrels encounter a big fat feeder with no obstacles, they take it easy.

Maintaining a persistent supply of $2s for big macs is a different story, though. Dollars don't grow on trees, and neither do houses.

I would argue that animals _do_ "push" themselves, but only in certain areas. Mate-selection competition among mammals being the first area that comes to mind, see [1]. There is no set goal of "enough" in that category(unlike, say, gathering N nuts to last through winter).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection_in_mammals

This is a strange way to look at it. Do you live your life as a wild animal? There are many things wild animals DO do that would be insane to do as a human.

They absolutely do. The animals that don't push themselves are the ones that get eaten or end up without a mate and so fail their biological imperative.

Looking at my 2 T. hermanni tortoises I can really see their species having pushed themselves for the past 100 million years.

Sarcasm aside, what they're really doing when the sun is out in summer: Lying in the sunlight, eating, walking, eating, hiding under a bush, hiding under piece of wood, bathing, etc all the way until they're 80. Quite peaceful animals.

What matters not that you constantly push yourself... it's well-being and that you are in personal equilibrium. Anything else is probably gonna end in a crash some time.

>> Sarcasm aside, what they're really doing when the sun is out in summer: Lying in the sunlight, eating, walking, eating, hiding under a bush, hiding under piece of wood, bathing, etc all the way until they're 80. Quite peaceful animals

Are you still talking about your pet turtles here? because that lifestyle is not natural for them. If they tried too much lying in the sunlight in the wild they would quickly get eaten by some predator.

I was simplifying somewhat. They do like to sunbath especially in the morning though and from what I've read in their natural habitat in Greece as well (to adult tortoises there's few natural predators there, but younglings tend to stay hidden in their first few years).

My point was more that wild animals do not push themselves in the same way we humans do. There's fulfilling basic needs and stress from disease or predators, but no voluntary exercise beyond what's necessary for finding food/drink or obsession for self-improvement.

I'd be curious if one could teach some smarter animals that they're able to self-improve but that probably requires higher-order thinking...

Because in nature there is no push, just survive or die.