Laughing rat, giggling dolphin: do animals have a sense of humor?

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Laughter is the simplest and most mysterious human reaction. By investigating the ability of animals to joke and perceive humor, we can get answers to important questions for humans: why do we laugh and what to do if we don’t want to smile at all?

How to make a dolphin laugh

This video has been viewed over 3.5 million times. In it, a girl does a handstand and somersaults in front of a huge aquarium and makes the dolphin laugh. Until now, we know little about what emotions animals can experience. But could it be that the dolphin in this video exhibits one of the most common ways of human self-expression - a sense of humor?

I would say that humor is the fixation of incredible logical connections that take place in the mind. This is the joke. You are not waiting for her, when suddenly - bam! It comes from the ability to connect strange, sometimes illogical things together, which evokes positive emotions.

Jaak Panksepp psychologist

Complex human humor requires intermediaries - words. But Panksepp says that positive emotions arise in an animal that senses the strangeness of what it sees.

Dolphins have long intrigued scientists with the complexity of the messaging system they use. The sounds that these animals make include clicks, beeps, whistles and squeals of different rhythms, frequencies and lengths. In addition, dolphins are capable of self-recognition.

They are among the small group of animals that can pass the mirror test. A dot is put over one of the dolphin's eyes with a special dye. Then a mirror is placed in the aquarium. The experiment is to determine if the dolphin can recognize the reflection as itself, or if it perceives it as another member of its own species.

Children under 15-18 months of age will not be able to take this test. Meanwhile, self-recognition is the most important stage of development, to which many species do not reach at all. However, dolphins seem to be able to recognize themselves in the mirror.

The test showed that the animal will rotate its head for a long time, notice a point above the eye and will slowly approach the surface of the mirror in order to better see the marker.

The mental capacity for self-recognition and the ability to understand the situation are decisive factors for the emergence of humor. Whether dolphins can do this remains an open question. However, there is no doubt that these animals have a certain way of communicating, which is similar to laughter.

A decade ago, dolphin researchers noticed a set of sounds they hadn't heard before: a short burst of impulses followed by a whistle. After studying the information received, scientists realized that dolphins make these sounds only during comic battles, but not aggressive fights. The researchers concluded that this set of sounds serves to designate the situation as pleasant and not threatening the health of rivals and thereby prevent a real fight.

The playful fights we see in animals are harmless attacks that serve a socializing function. Some of them can also be a way of teaching real combat. But you will definitely notice: the animal that is being attacked will make a certain set of sounds, which we interpret as laughter. I believe that humor has evolved into a signal form that shows that, as strange as the situation may look from the outside, in fact, everything is in order.

Peter McGraw is a psychologist at the University of Colorado.

Why monkeys don't like sitcoms

In our world, laughter has many functions, it can be positive or negative. And even sinister. But such capabilities have only evolved over the past 50,000 years with the evolution of language, society and culture.

The advent of speech and language means that the world of strange, illogical, or incomprehensible things is expanding at a tremendous rate. You laugh not to say “Okay, I got it, that was good,” but to express a wide variety of feelings and aspirations, from belonging to a social group to filling in uncomfortable pauses in a conversation.

Peter McGraw To determine the frequency of the use of laughter in the animal kingdom, Marina Davila-Ross, a psychologist at the University of Portsmouth, went to our closest "relatives" - the great apes. She recorded the vocalizations of primates during comic fights and compared the findings to our own laughter. It turned out that the laughter of chimpanzees and bonobos is closest to human laughter.

In general, a person's laughter is more melodic. The voice is used more because we have adapted to pronounce vowels and crisp, clear sounds. But in the case of chimpanzees, for example, we hear bursts of hoarse sounds. This allows us to conclude that our initial laugh sounded like proto-language.

Marina Davila-Ross

However, Davila-Ross found little evidence that monkeys can laugh simply by observing a funny situation. But people do it all the time. For example, they watch stand-up performances or sitcoms.

According to the researcher, this is exactly the point where we are very different from primates. “Watching two monkeys play, the third will never laugh. In order to laugh, she needs to be involved in the process,”says Davila-Ross.

Do rats like tickling

But if the origins of human laughter can be traced back to primates, perhaps we can find similar evidence if we go even further along the line of evolution? Maybe the squeals and whistles that dolphins make during games are somehow related to human laughter?

In the late 1990s, Jaak Panksepp and colleagues at Washington State University investigated the extent to which rodents can exhibit joy. They found that rats made a 50 kHz sound while playing. This squealing is inaccessible to the human ear, but it can be caught with the help of special equipment. Apparently, this is a signal of pleasure.

Scientists decided to go further. Deep brain stimulation has shown that when the rat squeals, the areas of the brain responsible for positive emotions start to work. Moreover, the researchers tried to tickle the rat, and it made the same sounds. When scientists stopped tickling the animal, the rodent was more inclined to play than before. Young children behave in a similar way: you can attract their attention and awaken the desire to play, and then it will be difficult to stop and calm down a cheerful and active baby.

Why do scientists make animals laugh?

Charles Darwin wrote that "there is no fundamental difference between humans and higher mammals when it comes to intelligence." And this thesis has become the cause of serious debates in the world of psychology, which do not subside to this day.

Panksepp believes that the ability to feel both joy and sadness is one of the fundamental tools of life as such, and possibly exists throughout the animal kingdom.

The brain is organized in so-called evolutionary layers, starting with the senses that we call primary processes. Learning ability and humor are secondary processes, but they were based on primary instincts. They increased or disappeared depending on the type of animal. This can be clearly seen in the example of birds. We still do not know if they are capable of demonstrating pleasure, but we do know for sure: birds are sad. If you take a chick and isolate it from the rest of the birds, it will cry like crazy for several hours.

Jaak Panksepp

Panksepp found evidence that even crayfish can experience pleasure. If they are given a small amount of drugs, such as cocaine, ketamine or morphine, in a certain place, the animal will willingly return there, as it will associate it with a feeling of joy.

Why know if dolphins can giggle and if rats really find it funny when they are tickled? Experiments like this can help humans. If we can learn to stimulate the very areas of the brain that are responsible for joy and positive emotions, we may be able to find a powerful and effective cure for depression. In addition, understanding the mechanisms of laughter in animals will be another step towards curing severe mental illnesses in humans.