Scientists prove that animals laugh...

[jennifert9]

But I think most PTers believed that already... Watch out for April Fool's Day jokes from the pets today!!

Life can be funny, and not just for humans.

Studies by various groups suggest monkeys, dogs and even rats love a good laugh. People, meanwhile, have been laughing since before they could talk.

"Indeed, neural circuits for laughter exist in very ancient regions of the brain, and ancestral forms of play and laughter existed in other animals eons before we humans came along with our 'ha-ha-has' and verbal repartee," says Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist at Bowling Green State University.

When chimps play and chase each other, they pant in a manner that is strikingly like human laughter, Panksepp writes in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Dogs have a similar response.

Rats chirp while they play, again in a way that resembles our giggles. Panksepp found in a previous study that when rats are playfully tickled, they chirp and bond socially with their human tickler. And they seem to like it, seeking to be tickled more. Apparently joyful rats also preferred to hang out with other chirpers.

The first laugh
Laughter in humans starts young, another clue that it's a deep-seated brain function.

"Young children, whose semantic sense of humor is marginal, laugh and shriek abundantly in the midst of their other rough-and-tumble activities," Panksepp notes.

Importantly, various recent studies on the topic suggest that laughter in animals typically involves similar play chasing. It could be that verbal jokes tickle ancient, playful circuits in our brains.

More study is needed to figure out whether animals are really laughing. The results could explain why humans like to joke around. And Panksepp speculates it might even lead to the development of treatments for laughter's dark side: depression.


Meanwhile, there's the question of what's so darn funny in the animal world.

"Although no one has investigated the possibility of rat humor, if it exists, it is likely to be heavily laced with slapstick," Panksepp figures. "Even if adult rodents have no well-developed cognitive sense of humor, young rats have a marvelous sense of fun."

Science has traditionally deemed animals incapable of joy and woe.

Panksepp's response: "Although some still regard laughter as a uniquely human trait, honed in the Pleistocene, the joke’s on them."

© 2005 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.
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[Cincy'sMom]

We always said Sadie is laughing at us when she plays chase in the bakyard...cuase she knows we could never catch her! We just might be right

[Pit Chick]

They must have some kind of sense of humor and understand what laughter is. My dogs know how to make me laugh and when they do something that makes me laugh, they try to keep doing it. When I tickle my dogs on their bellies, they wiggle and flop around then get up and run in cirlces with a big grin on their faces. If my dogs can smile when they are happy, I think they can laugh too.

[jennifert9]

I didn't post the picture from the article, but it was of a dog panting with that big wide open mouth and it said:

Scientists suspect that the panting behavior exhibited by dogs during "play chasing" is an analog for human laughter.

So I think you're right! She is laughing! Isn't that fun!

[lbaker]

As some of you may know or not, I work for the Association that publishes the journal Science. If you would like a copy of the [short] article just let me know and I will email you a PDF copy! There is also an article about "Dating Earth's Earliest Animals" but that opens up too many bad jokes with this crowd
Laurie