Do Animals Laugh?

It’s no secret that some animal species are highly intelligent – but do they also “get” jokes? Can they laugh? Are laughter and intelligence even related?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works. Have you
ever tried to tell a joke to an animal? I've
done it before, I talked to my dogs, whatever. But
this this is brain stuff and I'm Christian Seger. So
here's the question. Can animals laugh? In some cases this

(00:22):
might sound ridiculous. There are many different types of laughter,
and generally speaking, these types fall into two broad categories,
complex social laughter, where you have to know the context
or have a sense of humor to you know, get it,
and laughter in response to stimulation like tickling. Some animals,
such as primates, seem to have a sense of humor,

(00:44):
meaning they can respond to situations with a pant that
sounds eerily similar to laughter. You can read numerous stories
about Coco the gorilla allegedly making jokes in sign language
and so on. Additionally, when adult animals like dolphins or
ravens play pranks, they're indicating an understanding of humor. But

(01:05):
laughter itself seems more common than humans had originally thought.
Rats have been laughing their furry little keysters off since
the dawn of recorded history, but we only figured this
out a few years back. It turns out rats like
being tickled and when they're tickled, they chirp at a
range too high for human ears to pick up. It's

(01:26):
around fifty kila herds. We know this thanks to the
work of Jacques Panskep and Jeffrey Bergdorff beginning in the
late nineties at Bowling Green State University. And if we're
talking about that second category of laughter, a positive vocalization
associated with touch, then the comedy floodgates may have just
swung open. Dr de Villa Ross has been gathering as

(01:49):
much data as possible about the reactions various animals have
to being tickled. The list of animals that make a
vocal reaction when tickled include mere cats, camels, dolphins, dogs, owls, penguins,
and more So. What's the explanation, Well, according to Michael O. Wren,

(02:10):
an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience from Georgia State
University that's my alma mater, the case may be simple,
at least when applied to mammals. It's just a pleasant
feeling evoked by touching. Laughter it seems may well be
millions of years old and existed before human beings. If

(02:31):
you think about it, we're sort of late to the joke,
and to be fair, most scientists aren't calling this straight
out laughter. Instead, they're suggesting that these positive vocalizations, or
as Dr de Villa Ross writes, expressions of joy. And
when we ask whether laughter is a sign of intelligence,
Dr pank Stp notes that intelligence isn't a requirement for laughter. Instead,

(02:57):
he suggests maybe we should look at it from another direction.
Perhaps play in any species can increase social intelligence. As
research continues, we're learning more and more about animals, laughter,
and pep. Check out the brainstuff channel on YouTube, and

(03:18):
for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com