Laughing rat, giggling dolphin: Do animals humor

How laugh dolphin

This video has been viewed more than 3.5 million times. In it the girl does a handstand and somersaults in front of a huge aquarium and dolphin makes laugh. little we know so far about what emotions may have animals. But could it be that the dolphin in this video shows one of the most common ways of human expression - a sense of humor?

I would say that humor - is fixing incredible logical connectives occurring in consciousness. That is a joke. You do not expect it, when suddenly - wham! It comes from the ability to combine the strange and sometimes illogical things together, which causes positive emotions.

Jaak Panksepp (Jaak Panksepp), psychologist

Complex human humor requires intermediaries - words. But Panksepp says that positive emotions arise from an animal that feels unusual seen.

Dolphins have long intrigued scientists complexity of the message system they use. The sounds that emit these animals include clicks, beeps, whistles and squeals of different rhythms, frequency and length. Besides, Dolphins capable of self-recognition.

They are part of the small group of animals that can pass the mirror test. Over one eye dolphin special dye to finish. Then placed in the aquarium glass. The experiment is to determine whether to recognize a reflection of dolphin as himself, or he perceives it as another representative of his species.

Children aged 15-18 months are not able to pass this test. Meanwhile, Auto Detection - the most important stage of development, to which many species do not reach at all. However dolphins seem able to recognize themselves in a mirror.

The test showed that the animal will be a long time to rotate the head, notice a point above the eye and will slowly approach the surface of the mirror to get a better look marker.

Psychic ability to self-recognition and the ability to understand the situation are decisive factors for the emergence of humor. Can dolphins do this, it remains an open question. However, without a doubt, these animals have a certain way of communicating, which is similar to laughter.

Ten years ago, researchers studying dolphinsWe noticed a set of sounds, which they had not heard before: a short burst of pulses followed by a whistle. After examining the information received, the scientists realized that the dolphins emit these sounds only during the comic fights, but not aggressive fights. The researchers concluded that this set of sounds serves to indicate the situation as rivals pleasant and not endanger the health and thereby prevent a real fight.

Playful fights that we observe in animals - is harmless attacks, which have the function of socialization. Some of them can also be a way of learning to the real battle. But you will notice: animal that attacked, will emit a certain set of sounds, which we interpret as laughter. I believe that humor has evolved into a form of a signal, which shows how strange the situation may look from the outside, in fact it's all right.

Peter McGraw (Peter McGraw), a psychologist at the University of Colorado.

Why monkeys do not like sitcoms

In our world, laughter has many functions, it can be positive or negative. And even sinister. But these opportunities have evolved only in the last 50 000 years, together with the evolution of language, society and culture.

The appearance of speech and language means that the world of the strange, illogical or confusing things is growing at a tremendous speed. You laugh, not in order to indicate "OK, I knew it was good," but in order to express the widest the variety of feelings and aspirations, since membership of a social group and ending with filling awkward pauses conversation.

Peter McGraw

To determine the degree of frequency of use laughing in the animal world, Marina Davila-Ross (Marina Davila-Ross), a psychologist at the University of Portsmouth, went to our closest "relatives" - great apes. She recorded the vocalizations of primates during the comic fights and compared the findings with our own laughter. It turned out that the laughter of chimpanzees and bonobos are the closest to human.

In general, human laughter more melodic. Voice is used more, because we have adapted to pronounce vowels and crisp, clear sound. But in the case of chimpanzees, for example, we hear bursts of raucous sounds. This allows us to conclude that our initial laughter sounded like a proto-language.

Marina Davila-Ross

However, Davila-Ross found little evidence that apes may laughJust watching a funny situation. But people do it all the time. For example, watching stand-up performances or sitcoms.

According to the researcher, this is the point where we are very different from primates. "Watching the game two monkeys, and the third will never laugh. To laugh, it is necessary to be involved in the process ", - says Davila Ross.

Do tickling rats

But if the origins of human laughter can be traced thanks to the primates, we may find such evidence, if you go a step further along the line of evolution? Maybe, squeals and whistles that dolphins emit during the games, somehow related to the human laughter?

In the late 1990s, Jaak Panksepp and his colleagues at Washington State University have investigated the extent to which rodents can be fun. They discovered that rats emit a sound with a frequency of 50 kHz during the game. It vereschanie inaccessible to the human ear, but it can be caught with the help of special equipment. Apparently, it is the pleasure signal.

Scientists decided to go ahead. Deep brain stimulation has shown that when a rat vereschit, areas of the brain responsible for positive emotions, begin to work. Moreover, the researchers tried to tickle a rat, and she gave the same sounds. When the researchers stopped tickling the animal, rodent was located more to the games than before. Similarly behave little children: You can attract their attention and awaken the desire to play, and then cheerful and active baby will already be difficult to stop and calm down.

Why do scientists make animals laugh

Charles Darwin wrote that "there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals when it comes to the mental faculties." And this idea has led to serious debate in the world of psychology, which still continues to this day.

Panksepp believes that the ability to feel joy and sadness is one of the basic tools of life and as such may exist in the world of animals.

The brain is organized in the form of so-called evolutionary layers, starting with those feelings that we call the primary process. Learning ability and humor - is secondary processes, but they were based on primary instincts. They enhance or disappear depending on the type of animal. This is clearly seen in the example of birds. We still do not know whether they are able to demonstrate the fun, but do know: the birds is sad. If you take a chick and isolated from the other animals, he will cry like crazy for a few hours.

Jaak Panksepp

Panksepp found evidence that even cancers can experience pleasure. If they are given a small amount of drugs, such as cocaine, ketamine and morphine, in a certain place, the animal gladly return there, as it will associate it with a sense of joy.

Why did know whether the dolphins giggle and whether rats really funny when they tickle? Similar experiments can help a person. If we can stimulate those same brain regions that are responsible for pleasure and positive emotions may turn out to find a powerful and effective medicine depression. In addition, an understanding of mechanisms of occurrence of laughter in animals will be another step towards the cure severe mental diseases in humans.