There 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 <i>much much</i> better.<p>Laughter is yet another trait some might see as typically human, yet here we are.
This is one of the most beautiful ideas to have ever entered my awareness.<p>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!
For those wondering which animals…<p>> 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.<p>Quote from the UCLA Newroom article referenced in the OpenCulture article, <a href="https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/animals-laugh-too-ucla-analysis-suggests" rel="nofollow">https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/animals-laugh-too-ucla-an...</a>
So 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?
This 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
Here is the paper >> <a href="https://gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/05/Play_vocals_Bioacoustics_2021.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/site...</a><p>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.<p>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.<p>Here is a super cute video of how social play would work: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2EmA_UwIM8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2EmA_UwIM8</a><p>But I am not sure if the animals are laughing though.
This is probably me not being able to “read the room” but this study both makes me very happy and very sad.<p>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.)<p>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 <i>most</i> cases.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQRAfJyEsko</a>
Ferrets vocalize quite a bit and I fully expected them to be on the list before I checked.<p>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.
Complete list of animals found to have play vocalisations (laughter) can be found in the linked study (pdf): <a href="https://gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2021/05/Play_vocals_Bioacoustics_2021.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://gabryant.scholar.ss.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/site...</a><p>Includes species of cats, dogs, monkeys, rodents, birds, others.
Heinlein wrote in Stranger in a Strange Land that "Man is the [only] animal who laughs." Who's laughing now? (Rats and cows apparently).<p>All jokes aside, interesting research. We find ourselves more similar than dissimilar to our less sentient counterparts each year.
This is where everything started :
<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31564493/" rel="nofollow">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31564493/</a>
So 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.<p>What a load of bunk.
That'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.
My pet theory is that laughter isn't "just" a play signal, but a teaching method in social animals where the young learn from adults.<p>Slapstick is popular for a reason. We laugh <i>instinctively</i> at others' accidents because being laughed at provides a negative reinforcement for the individual that is the object of ridicule.<p>Being laughed at is <i>not</i> pleasant, at all. It's not "fun" or "play". It <i>hurts</i>. Most people will do <i>anything</i> to avoid being laughed at, especially in public or social situations.<p>That's... the point! Being laughed at is negative reinforcement, teaching us what not to do. The reason even our friends and family will <i>hurt us emotionally</i> 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.<p>That's why we <i>all</i> think it's funny if someone slips on a banana peel. We <i>point and laugh</i> as the victim is crying in pain.<p>We don't think it's funny if a banana tree falls on someone. We don't laugh. We run over to help immediately.<p>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]<p>In the second case they were <i>not at fault</i> and laughing wouldn't help them improve. They just need help.<p>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 <i>lethally</i> 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.<p>PS: It's a fun exercise to think of more scenarios where you would laugh <i>at</i> someone or similar scenarios where you wouldn't. You'll find that much of the time you <i>would</i> laugh, the person you're laughing at would have probably learned a lesson from that that's beneficial to you. (e.g.: would keep <i>you</i> safer if they made less mistakes in the workplace around dangerous tools.)<p>[1] Young children are <i>especially</i> 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.