This is a fascinating article, found Here
Laughing Dog: Vocalizations of domestic dogs during play encounters
Patricia Simonet*, Molly Murphy, and Amy Lance
Science Department, Sierra Nevada College – Lake Tahoe
Brief Abstract
Employing both play-back and spectrogram analysis of the vocalizations, this study investigates the vocalizations of dogs during play encounters, specifically the breathy exhalation produced during play. This breathy exhalation, dog-laughter, appears to be a vocalization exclusive to play encounters. Further, this study investigates whether this vocalization is a signal to reinforce play and a signal that can initiate play.
During play encounters dogs vocalize using at least four distinct patterns; barks, growls, whines, and laughs (a breathy pronounced forced exhalation). Although, most dogs will utter these four patterns of vocalization during play, only the laugh appears to be exclusively uttered during play or friendly encounters and not during other encounters. For example, barks and growls are uttered during agonistic encounters as well as during play encounters. Further, dog-laughs are used to initiate play. So powerful is this stimulus, that humans can initiate play with dogs by using the dog-laugh without any other play signal, such as a play-bow. Upon hearing a dog-laugh subjects would use a play-face and chase or play-bow with the individual producing the dog-laugh, whether the individual was dog or human.
There are few reports of laughter during play with animals other than humans and chimpanzees. One exception was a study done by Panskepp in 1997. He found that rats chirped when tickled or just before receiving morphine. Simonet in 1997 reported that Asian elephants, during play, emitted quiet breathy sounds. Although, she was not reporting these sounds as laughter, she noted that they produced these sounds during solitary play encounters as well as social play encounters. Dogs will dog-laugh both during solitary play and social play. Solitary play is when the dog is playing without a play-partner, such as when a dog animates an object by tossing it into the air. During such solitary object-play dogs vocalize the dog-laugh.
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You can listen to clips of a dog-laugh Here
I've definitely noticed the dog-laugh when my two are playing, and sometimes when I playfully mimick their excited pants they go absolutely nuts with excitement.
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