It's official: Animals laugh

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on April 2nd, 2005

From LiveScience.com, comes the news that animals might laugh:

“Indeed, neural circuits for laughter exist in very ancient regions of the brain, and ancestral forms of play and laughter existed in other animals eons before we humans came along with our ‘ha-ha-has’ and verbal repartee,” says Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist at Bowling Green State University.

His name, we hasten to point out, is probably pronounced, “yock.” (And the male half of the staff here hastens to point out that Panksepp toils at BGSU, an institution from which the male half of the staff escaped after three years of academic wheel-spinning in their journalism program.) The female half of the staff seems to vaguely recall a SNL sketch called “Wilderness Comedian,” in which a standup comic was depicted making woodland animals chuckle.

“Although no one has investigated the possibility of rat humor, if it exists, it is likely to be heavily laced with slapstick,” Panksepp figures. “Even if adult rodents have no well-developed cognitive sense of humor, young rats have a marvelous sense of fun.”

Young rats, be free tonight! (With apologies to Rod Stewart.) Read the rest.

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