(Image: Dr Marina Davila Ross / University of Portsmouth)
“Man is distinguished from all other creatures by his faculty of laughter,” wrote the English essayist Joseph Addison in 1712. Modern science has a different take – up to a point.
We’re pretty sure that no other animal laughs quite like we do. That’s down to our unique status as an ape that has learned to stand on its own two feet. “Bipedalism was the breakthrough,” says Robert Provine, the doyen of laughter research. Four-legged mammals must synchronise their breath with their stride. By taking pressure off the thorax, bipedalism gave us the breath control needed for speaking and the ability to chop up our exhalations, giving the characteristic ha-ha-ha sound of human laughter.
If laughter really is just a social lubricant (see “What are you laughing at?”), you might expect our equally social great-ape cousins to do something similar. “Laughter is literally the sound of rough-and-tumble play,” says Provine – and great apes at play do indeed produce something akin to a laugh. But their playful pants are not as musical as ours and instead of being made up of extended exhalations, they are produced by breathing in and out. As a result, ape laughter doesn’t sound much like our own. When Provine played a recording of chimp laughter to his students, most of them thought it was a dog panting, a few had it down as noisy sex and some even heard sawing or sanding.
“Most people identified chimp laughter as a dog panting, a few had it down as noisy sex and some even heard sawing or sanding”…
