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UCLA Study Finds Laughter in 65 Species, from Rats to Cows
- bckr 5y agoThis is one of the most beautiful ideas to have ever entered my awareness. Laughter is hard to beat in terms of sheer beauty--the more of it in the universe, the better. And on same planet what's more!
- fastball 5y agoNot to be nitpicky but I would say there are definitely situations where laughter is not a positive (edit: or beautiful) thing – laughing at someone else's misfortune, laughing in pain, etc.
- trollied 5y agoIndeed. I have a nervous laugh that sneaks out in less than ideal situations :(
- lostlogin 5y agoCompletely agree. However some of the most painful things I’ve done have been objectively hilarious. I wish I’d seen me drop a beehive.
- nomilk 5y agoFrom Paul Graham's 'Taste for Makers' essay: > humor is related to strength. To have a sense of humor is to be strong: to keep one's sense of humor is to shrug off misfortunes, and to lose one's sense of humor is to be wounded by them.
- bckr 5y agoAbsolutely. Nevertheless, and to nitpick, "beauty" and "positivity" are not isomorphic.
- fastball 5y agoSure, but I wouldn't call laughing as the world burns "beautiful" either – more "psychotic".
- bckr 5y agosee baskethead's comment nearby
- jcims 5y agoI just have to say that i have had a word stuck on the tip of my tongue for an embarrassingly long time, maybe six months now. I’ve had occasion to use it several times recently on a project but it was just stuck wherever words get lost. I’m cruising HN in a post completely unrelated to what I’m doing and there it is, in living color: isomorphic. I could feel the tension release in my brain as it sunk in. Thank you!
- narag 5y agoNow you can use it in all kind of improper situations and laugh out loud isomorphically.
- jcims 5y agoIt's totally getting abused.
- hetspookjee 5y agoNow I’m looking for the word for the phenomenon that you’ve described and we all can relate too!
- amelius 5y agoBut rats and cows don't know that.
- timeon 5y agoHow do you know?
- baskethead 5y agoTragedy and comedy are the basis of all theater.
- bouvin 5y ago“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” Mel Brooks [1] [1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21470-tragedy-is-when-i-cut-my-finger-comedy-is-when https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21470-tragedy-is-when-i-cut...
- fastball 5y agoBut not all theater is meant to make you laugh?
- peterburkimsher 5y agoLaughter is remarkable because, like clapping, it's contagious, and it shares joy and happiness with a whole community. In the process of laughing together, our bodies move in time, which synchronises our muscle movements, which synchronises our heartbeats. Yes, laughter is very powerful, and is a wonderful force for good in the universe :)
- the_af 5y agoI've read, but forgot where, that grinning -- not exactly laughter, but a related act -- is also related to aggression or has its roots in it. It's hard to deny exposed teeth in a wide green -- think chimpanzee -- look at least slightly threatening.
- bckr 5y agoThink about this--as omnivores, we are happy when fed by flesh--Feasting amidst laughter--joy amidst butchery. Can we transcend this--sublimate laughter into a realm of undeathful life? Should we? Are vegans and transhumans idealogical bedfellows? I love chickens--as pets and as dinner.
- uhtred 5y agoI find it sad that not many people seem to laugh genuinely. So many people do the fake laughter, wiping away imaginary tears, at things which just aren't funny but which they seem to think they should appear to find really funny in a group.
- mch82 5y agoFor those wondering which animals… > They found such vocal play behavior documented in at least 65 species. That list includes a variety of primates, domestic cows and dogs, foxes, seals, and mongooses, as well as three bird species, including parakeets and Australian magpies. Quote from the UCLA Newroom article referenced in the OpenCulture article, https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/animals-laugh-too-ucla-analysis-suggests https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/animals-laugh-too-ucla-an...
- neuronic 5y agoSince this is so broadly spread among species I wonder if there are other forms of laughing that aren’t easily detected if you don’t know about it. Does some form of muscle spasms occur in all of these animals? Closely watching my cat now.
- KineticLensman 5y ago> Since this is so broadly spread among species I wonder if there are other forms of laughing that aren’t easily detected if you don’t know about it Yes. As per the original research article, some of the vocalisations are outside the range of human hearing.
- rcarmo 5y agoYou should watch it closely anytime, it is very likely to be plotting something even if you can't tell it's laughing manically...
- KineticLensman 5y agoThe full list is in the original research article [0], in both tabular and cladogram form. [0] https://gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/05/Play_vocals_Bioacoustics_2021.pdf https://gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/site...
- JumpCrisscross 5y agoSo in summary: primates, social mammals, domesticated mammals and vocal bird species?
- Closi 5y agoI wonder what their jokes are (outside of tickling) it’s hard to imagine a rat punchline.
- quicklime 5y agoI wonder if a rat would find this magic trick funny: https://time.com/4145151/orangutan-barcelona-zoo-magic-trick/ https://time.com/4145151/orangutan-barcelona-zoo-magic-trick...
- Ankaios 5y agoAs hard as it is to imagine a rat punchline, I find it even harder to imagine the tiny little cups they'd put the punch in.
- purplecats 5y agoperhaps more visceral humor in the form of schadenfreude
- whythre 5y agoI doubt any of the laughs are provoked by verbal ‘jokes.’ But rats are very smart, and play (wrestle) around with each other. It’s probably not too different from kids giggling as they engage in rough and tumble play.
- dotancohen 5y agoI've seen a rat punchline. One of my rats loved to nibble pencil erasers. She would find all sorts of creative ways to get the eraser from me. With rats, who need stimulation, it's good to have arms wars. I don't put the eraser in an impossible spot, rather a harder-to-get-to spot. She figured out that if she distracts me while doing homework, I'll turn my attention to the distraction. She could then run around from the other side to scoop up my eraser and take it somewhere to nibble. I began to catch her in the act and call her name as if I'm frustrated (but laughing) when she does this, like I do with my children today when they put a clothespin on my shirt then run off. One time, she picked up the eraser and ran off. But I was too busy to play along right away, I just let her scoot off. So she sat there, with the eraser, waiting for me to finish and then chase her down. Apparently she was no longer stealing the eraser to nibble, rather, it had become a joke between us.
- pleb_nz 5y agoI had no idea laughter had previously been believed as confined to so few species.
- kwhitefoot 5y agoI think it is more that it is now demonstrated to be a feature of at least this many species.
- wombatmobile 5y ago> I had no idea laughter had previously been believed as confined to so few species. What humans believe about other species tells us a lot about humans, and nothing about other species.
- pleb_nz 5y agoReminds me of [My father] taught me “See that bird? It’s a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it’s called a halsenflugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird–you only know something about people; what they call that bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way,” and so forth. There is a difference between the name of the thing and what goes on. Richard Feynman, “What Is Science?“, presented in 1966
- MattGaiser 5y agoSo what does that look like in a dog? My family has a dog and she has a pretty nice life and is usually pretty happy, especially when upsidedown having a belly rub. Are her flailing legs and head and panting considered dog laughter?
- xapata 5y agoMaybe wagging? Some dogs play-growl when playing tug.
- joshschreuder 5y agoMy dogs growl and yip when wrestling with each other, I feel like this probably comes under the “non-aggressive vocalisation” mentioned in the article. Growling is obviously a well known sign of fear and aggression but I guess the context is important.
- niyaven 5y agoWhen playing dogs will indeed bark, growl and whines, but also produce a forced exhalation: that's their laugh. Other sounds can be produced in other contexts indeed, whereas this dog laughter is exclusive to play.
- sgt101 5y agoDo you mean the "sorta sneeze" they do? I think mine do that when they think/want that we are going on a walk or into the garden to run about. It's a signal of "let's go adventuring". There's also the high pitched excited yip and then the tongue out wiggling walk thing as well both of which might be laughter I think.
- throwawayForMe2 5y agoI read about the “sorta sneeze” as being a call for consensus for “let’s go”. When my dog did that as we were getting ready to go out, I tried making a similar sound back and the dog looked at me immediately like I finally said something she understood!
- yread 5y agoHow did they electrically stimulate the neurons of the rats? They wouldn't cut them open to study whether they are ticklish, right?
- spoonjim 5y agoI’ve never understood why tickling feels so unpleasant but makes me laugh uncontrollably.
- GoblinSlayer 5y agoHuh, foxes. Everything foxes say sounds like laughter though.
- liquid153 5y agoWhat the fox say.
- Ccecil 5y agoFerrets vocalize quite a bit and I fully expected them to be on the list before I checked. Anyone who has had one as a pet knows they laugh when tickled and "talk" quite a bit. When they are happy they make a hard to explain "cooing" noise as they go about their mischief.
- Tepix 5y agoThere are often discussions about what makes humans special and things like self-awareness, humour, sarcasm, tool usage, ethics etc are brought forward. I think there are hardly any fundamental differences between humans and other animals. We've merely reached an intelligence threshold that allowed us to develop better languages and writing and that means knowledge can be collected and passed on much much better. Laughter is yet another trait some might see as typically human, yet here we are.
- timoth3y 5y ago“Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.” -- Mark Twain
- elif 5y agoMark should see my dog after he eats cat food.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> there are hardly any fundamental differences between humans and other animals This is a compact and ex post facto unsurprising list. Primates, social mammals, domesticated mammals and certain birds. The line between us and social apex predators (cats, dogs and certain birds, all of whom our ancestors allied with ages ago) are blurry. The line between us and most species are stark.
- circlefavshape 5y agoWow. You've just given me a vision of a future where we know enough about other animals that we've been forced to give up on human exceptionalism, so we fall back to insisting on social-apex-predator exceptionalism instead
- JumpCrisscross 5y agoIf we can’t acknowledge that complex tool wielding and laughter are potentially galaxies apart in terms of abundance, that future looks grim.
- tamaharbor 5y agoSo that cow WAS laughing at me!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- notRobot 5y agoComplete list of animals found to have play vocalisations (laughter) can be found in the linked study (pdf): https://gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/05/Play_vocals_Bioacoustics_2021.pdf https://gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/site... Includes species of cats, dogs, monkeys, rodents, birds, others.
- kingkawn 5y agoThe supposed differences between us and other creatures are pretenses for our violence against them, not scientific observation or data.
- neuronic 5y agoThis is probably me not being able to “read the room” but this study both makes me very happy and very sad. I recently watched Dominion documentary [1] and the more we learn about animals cognition the more I feel the weight of their massive abuse especially in the last 150 years. (The recent story of an HNer interacting with a spider on his desk was really cool though, I don’t have a link anymore.) Without judging anyone or their behavior in particular I just feel repelled by our treatment of other clearly cognitive beings. The people working these places don’t seem like ones you would want around anyone in society either and I don’t buy the story that it’s only bad in some places. I’d wager that it’s really bad in most cases. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko
- Luc 5y agoCultured meat will become widely available soon. I have high hopes.
- seanwilson 5y ago> widely available soon I keep hearing this but we're likely still decades anyway from this scaling up to replacing most meat so I think individuals who care about this issue right now shouldn't be using it as an excuse for waiting to give up meat. It's been just around the corner for ages and still not in supermarkets, let alone at the scale and cut variety required for everyone to replace meat with it. Stances like "I'll switch when it's the same look and taste but cheaper" and "it's unnatural" are going to take time to go away too. And what about people that want a whole roast chicken or a duck leg? There's lots of good replacements already for dairy milk for example but it's still popular so I'm not hopeful cultured meat will be different. Maybe the real issue is the cost of animal products don't take externalities into account and are artificially cheap.
- neuronic 5y agoThis is my hope as well but I have already heard the backlash: it's pharma companies trying to control our food. Increasingly, I feel afraid of the lunatics trying to hinder progress like some 14th century catholics. Progress to me means also an increasing awareness of the limitations of our ecosystems and that infinite growth is a myth.
- goldroger9090 5y ago[flagged]
- jiggawatts 5y agoMy pet theory is that laughter isn't "just" a play signal, but a teaching method in social animals where the young learn from adults. Slapstick is popular for a reason. We laugh instinctively at others' accidents because being laughed at provides a negative reinforcement for the individual that is the object of ridicule. Being laughed at is not pleasant, at all. It's not "fun" or "play". It hurts. Most people will do anything to avoid being laughed at, especially in public or social situations. That's... the point! Being laughed at is negative reinforcement, teaching us what not to do. The reason even our friends and family will hurt us emotionally in this manner when we make a mistake is not because they're cruel or mean, but because this is the mechanism the human species uses to make sure every tribe member learns the lessons they need to learn to keep each other safe. That's why we all think it's funny if someone slips on a banana peel. We point and laugh as the victim is crying in pain. We don't think it's funny if a banana tree falls on someone. We don't laugh. We run over to help immediately. In the first case the person wasn't paying attention and needed their inattention corrected. They were at fault and needed to be taught how to walk safely, like a young child.[1] In the second case they were not at fault and laughing wouldn't help them improve. They just need help. If we didn't find laughing at silly people pleasant, we wouldn't do it, and then... people would learn less and make more mistakes. They -- our children or cousins -- might even die or accidentally kill other tribe members killed through their ineptitude. Hunting is lethally dangerous. Mistakes must be punished. Laughing minimises mistakes in our genetic kin and tribe members on whom our own reproductive fitness depends. Hence, laughing would be highly selected for in intelligent social creates like apes and especially humans. PS: It's a fun exercise to think of more scenarios where you would laugh at someone or similar scenarios where you wouldn't. You'll find that much of the time you would laugh, the person you're laughing at would have probably learned a lesson from that that's beneficial to you. (e.g.: would keep you safer if they made less mistakes in the workplace around dangerous tools.) [1] Young children are especially hilarious to adults precisely because they make so many mistakes that need correcting! We laugh less at adults because there's a delicate balance between hurting people emotionally versus the expected benefit of the lesson being taught. Similarly, senior people will laugh at the mistakes of junior people, but the other way around is very rare.
- pkrumins 5y agoDoes anyone know if they found if cats laugh? I can't find it.
- GoblinSlayer 5y agoNo way, cats play in total silence. They have keen hearing and don't need any special play signal on top of that.
- angusiasty 5y agoThat's an old finding. professor Jordan Peterson was talking about it for years. I can't remember the name of the researcher he was referring to, but he found that in rats.
- wqtz 5y agoHere is the paper >> https://gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/05/Play_vocals_Bioacoustics_2021.pdf https://gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/site... I was curious about how they were defining laughter? I am a bit skeptical to be honest about the idea of change in behavior when we apply something to animals that will trigger a laughter in human. We can't be sure if that change behavior is indicative of joy and expressed through the vocalization of laugher. The paper seem to be (I have skimmed) focused on group dynamics to determine what is laughter. They indicate that how animals signals they were having joy by making vocalization and it indicates social play. Here is a super cute video of how social play would work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2EmA_UwIM8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2EmA_UwIM8 But I am not sure if the animals are laughing though.
- jrlocke 5y agoThis is an unpopular opinion, and should be wielded very carefully, but I think something often lost in these conversations is that the existence of a human behavior in an animal is not sufficient evidence that it's backed by the full weight of the human-like mental states. It may well be, but additional evidence must be presented. As humans, we're strongly prone to anthropomorphize–I'm capable of ascribing human feelings even to inanimate objects–and so are prone to doing the above without rigor. An extreme example: if you drop acid into the water in which a paramecium lives, it will fire up its cilia and frantically try to retreat. It's a single cell, there is no suffering or mental states, but it sure looks like it. An ant could have a sad looking death, but it surely cannot reach the depths of human sorrow, and the related suffering, that a similar event could elicit. It can't mourn the time it won't spend with its children, or the ways its life could have gone. I'm not proposing that everything between us and the paramecium cannot suffer, but that arguments in these areas must go beyond X has behavior Y, so X must have full mental state associated with Y.
- gman83 5y agoIt's been pretty well demonstrated, for example in pigs: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8sx4s79c https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8sx4s79c
- anshumankmr 5y agoThey are like us, but they aren't us. This is an example of the former.
- alecst 5y agoHow come for you the starting point is that animals do not have feelings and emotions like us, and that we have to have evidence for it? Why isn’t the starting point that they do have feelings like us and we have to find evidence against it? Really, other animals are so similar to us on every dimension except language that I wonder why people reason this way. Mammals in particular. I’ve seen Denver the guilty dog. She’s behaving like she feels guilty. It’s harder to buy an argument that we are just projecting our human notion of guilt onto her, rather than she simply feels guilt. To put it another way, your position implies that all of these things were experience — laughter, grief, guilt, shame, deception — might have begun with humans. For me, that’s a position you need a lot of evidence for.
- 01100011 5y agoI wonder what Gary Larson will do with this discovery...
- gtsnexp 5y agoThis is where everything started : https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31564493/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31564493/
- mrVentures 5y agoAnytime's a good time to go vegan.
- sigzero 5y agoSure but no.
- erfgh 5y agoSo a guy tickles a rat and the rat makes sounds. This apparently amounts to "laughing" and somehow should make us feel the rat more closely resembles a human. What a load of bunk.
- pygy_ 5y agoWe’re distant cousins, it’s not surprising we have common traits. AFAIK, there is no single trait that is qualitatively human. We distinguish ourselves quantitatively (our fine motor skills, the size of our working memory and culture).
- albatross13 5y agoGood to finally have confirmation that my rats are indeed laughing at me when we try and play and they run away from me.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kwyjibo1230 5y agoHeinlein wrote in Stranger in a Strange Land that "Man is the [only] animal who laughs." Who's laughing now? (Rats and cows apparently). All jokes aside, interesting research. We find ourselves more similar than dissimilar to our less sentient counterparts each year.
- jadbox 5y agoI really want to hear audio samples of each of the species listed as just to hear the range of laughter types amoung species!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]