Laughter is one of the most natural impulses of the human being. Most babies start laughing out loud around 3 to 4 months.long before they can talk or walk. Expressing pleasure or delight comes naturally to us, but we’re not the only creatures who communicate with laughter.
UCLA researchers have identified 65 species of animals that make “play vocalizations”, or what we would consider laughter.
game vocalizations
Some of those vocalizations were already well documented – we’ve long known that apes and rats laugh – but others may come as a surprise. Along with a long list of primate species, cows and domestic dogs, foxes, seals, mongooses, and three species of birds are also prone to laughter.
Primatologist and UCLA anthropology graduate student, Sasha Winkler, and UCLA communication professor, Greg Bryant, shared their findings in a study in the journal Bioacoustics.
The authors explored various game vocalization sounds, recording them as loud or tonal, loud or quiet, high or low pitch, short or long, a single call or rhythmic pattern.
However, laughter in some animals is not as obvious as it is in these foxes and chimpanzees. Researchers at the Humboldt University of Berlin found that rats laugh when tickled, and seem to enjoy being tickled, as they seek it out, but their vocalizations are ultrasonic, so it’s hard to hear them without special instruments.
Then, in the following video, you can see an extension of the study as well as various examples of animals laughing, such as domesticated foxes: