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Can animals laugh?


Bill

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Sitting laughing my head off while watching an old Tommy Copper program recently, I noticed the cat just sitting looking at me and this got me wondering if any animal has a sense of humour or indeed can any animal laugh?

 

Whacha think? :roll:

 

Bill :)

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primates probably do have some sort of sense of humour but how developed it is,is another question.

 

There is of course the "laughing" hyena but that is not a laugh at anything funny.

 

as for cats. no cat will ever appear to have anything but the utmost contempt for anything that is deemed beneath them, which includes just about everything, and probably wander off somewhere private and laugh their heads off.

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This little primate certainly knows how to laugh and has a sense of humour

 

 

OK so I'm not stupid but it did make me laugh.

 

This little chap in Dorset seems to show that they may understand the meaning of smiling and appearing to be happy.

 

 

Sorry Bill..... I realise this was a serious topic but couldn't resist posting those.

 

Our dog definately has what we call her 'smiling face' when she's playing. It looks like a big smile anyway unless she's just trying to get some extra air of course. She's never actually laughed out loud though :blink: YET :unsure:

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Tickled Rats Laugh: We all remember Templeton's sneer -- the rat in E.B. White's "Charlotte's Web," but do rats laugh? Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp of Washington State University suspected so.

 

He explains the rats make all their sounds at very high frequencies beyond our hearing range, called ultrasonics. He noticed when a group of young rats were in a container together, his instruments picked up all kinds of little chirps. So he decided to launch a very scientific investigation: "I finally woke up one morning and said perhaps it's laughter. I went into the laboratory and I said, "Let's go tickle some rats!"

 

The rats, it turns out, have a real funny bone and chirped "outrageously," according to Panskepp, when tickled. In fact, the more Panskepp tickled rats, the more the animals appeared to become fond of the researcher. So yes, rats do laugh (in case you were wondering).

**** Taken from Discovery News

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