Read the 1st post of the humor series here. 
Is humor human?
Do animals laugh and why should we care?
One of the first things that comes up when you start to study what people find funny, and why they do, is the issue of purpose.
“What’s it all for?”
And when you start asking those questions invariably you need to see if humor is a uniquely human quality or if other creatures have some of it too and why might they.
Some animals experience emotions in ways humans do. Anger, pleasure, fear, and sorrow are a few commonalities.
For instance, pachyderms express grief at the death of a member of their parade. House cats don’t give a crap about the death of anyone (usually), but they are certainly spiteful on par with the cunning and potency of humans.
So why not the emotion of humor…?
It turns out that science has tried to measure that. The results, in my opinion, are mixed and even a bit unsavory. But, I’ll get to that in a minute.
Noises of Play
Plebeian anecdotes of laughing dogs or snickering nonhuman primates circulate and seem to indicate that something akin to genuine laughter or maybe some sort of sense of humor could be at work. Yes?
For a number of years scientists have discerned what seems to be jolly noises coming from chimps at play. These sounds mimic the intonations of young children at play and keg parties.
And then there’s the business of rodents.
Rats, actually.
I told you it would get unsavory.
Laughter in the Lab
Apparently, scientists can get grant money to tickle rats.
You heard me right.
See, if they just use the phrase “heterospecific hand play” on their proposal, a grant check comes in the mail.
The phrase sounds sophisticated and science-y, and no one in the grant issuing department considers it perverted.
With grant money in hand, scientists use their other hand and go about tickling rats of different ages, in different settings, at different times, and sometimes (I’m guessing) on the couch near a cozy fire in the fireplace and atmospheric candlelight as Barry White music plays softly in the background. It’s all very clinical.
The Results
Older (married?) rats don’t seem to respond, but juvenile rats, foolish to the wiles of scientists, make high frequency chirping sounds as they encounter “heterospecific hand play”.
The sounds are somewhat comparable to staccato laughing of human children at play. Human children playing but also gnawing at garbage in a dumpster, perhaps. Or, perhaps the panicked sounds of high anxiety.
The strange result is that the young rats then seek out the human that tickled him or her for plenty more of the same. (This convinces the scientists that the impressionable rats are enjoying the interaction and not developing strange and unhealthy co-dependency issues sourced in dubious psychologically damaging tickle abuse.)
In fact, the rats grow closer to their ticklers socially, and perhaps hope for an engagement ring one day.
I’d also like to note that so far I’m finding no such experiments are conducted where rats are allowed to tickle scientists and whether the rats or the scientists laugh because of it. This seems like a gross oversight. It would also be interesting to know if the scientists found the rats attractive in different outfits and vice versa. Or, maybe not.
I don’t know whether to be proud of the these discoveries or terribly embarrassed for the scientists.
The Purpose of Humor
What laughter–or its nonhuman equivalent–appears to do in the animal world is to build social bridges through appropriate positive interactions.
Positive, mutual, social responses build bonds, trust, and cooperation. Everyone wins.
Rats, dogs, and chimps are all highly social creatures, and maybe this is needed for things to go well.
The exception is the occasional instance where rats eat their young.
• This seems to indicate that some tickling just isn’t funny, or that kids can be a real pain sometimes.
Humor and Spirituality
I’m proposing that humor remains invaluable to human flourishing, not just for healthy social bonding, but ultimately for the vital element of identity, and this is the territory of spirituality. We’ll get into the reasons of why more deeply as we continue.
Like those laughing animals, humans are social too. When they are not socially healthy, bad things happen: murder, sexual assault, arson, random violence, and strange behavior on Facebook.
But, unlike animals, scientific experiments show that humans have three main reasons for laughing besides a tickling episode, according to work by psychologist Diana Szameitat. Here are the other three:
1. Laughing in joy.
2. Taunting laughter. Laughing at someone in contempt.
3. Schadenfreude laughter. Laughing at another person who encounters something unfortunate, like falling down. The Germans have just the precise word for it too, which is not surprising.
I think there are several more, but that’s for future posts.
Funny Things are Seriously Complex
Humor and laughter comprise a whole system of complex emotions for humans, compared to animals.
And as anyone who’s been tickled for too long knows, sometimes humor includes mixed emotions like discomfort, fear, apprehension, or wanting to slap a scientist for creepy “heterospecific hand play”.
We’ll learn much more about the complexity of humor as we go. In future posts I’ll also cover the dubious reputation of humor among early philosophers, the fascinating aspect of humorous sarcasm and mockery, plus the latest compelling humor research theory that explains both the good and bad reasons why we find things funny.
Anything for a laugh.
To sum up, humor is both uniquely human and shared among certain other creatures in a lesser way.
Read the next one in the series here.
Are you enjoying this series? I’d love to know.
Thanks for reading!
-Lisa
Below are some of my “field notes” I collected from this extended and uncut interview with Brené Brown on Krista Tippet’s show “On Being”