I wasn’t referring to children or adolescents. I was referring to human mental abilities to observe over time, remember, abstract and emulate in various ways and at varying degrees. It’s not an ability tied to age, except in play.

For example, Velcro was designed by "copying" cockle burrs. Clothing often "copies" patterns in animals. These are not childish pursuits.

There’s likely a lot of things that evolved from copying things early hominids and humans observed from animals and nature. Fishing, weaving, weapons, very early language, clothing, agriculture, food storage, etc.

We watched how animals did it and adapted techniques to suit us, sometimes even combining observations from multiple species.

Things evolved and advanced from there to become uniquely human behaviors and skills.