From apes to birds, animal species that “laugh” | Hacker News Reader

From apes to birds, animal species that “laugh”

arstechnica.com

115 pointsEngineering-MD49 comments

I use to feed the crows at my parents house in FL. One evening I toss some seeds and a crow tried to dive and pick up but crashed and tumbled. The other crows on the fence started squawking very loud and a few of them even mimicked the movement by fake crashing in the same spot. This continued for a good few minutes.

Must have been the funniest thing they ever saw.

This short story is so easy to visualize as some short cartoon. Great story, thanks for sharing.

FL is Florida, so Corvus brachyrhynchos? Someone should do a scientific study of the sense of humour of different Corvus species. It might be worth an Ig Nobel Prize.

I was at an open zoo in south Thailand about 8 years ago and they had an open field with elephants and zebras roaming together.

A zebra walked past the elephant and the elephant whacked the zebra on the butt with his trunk. The zebra got a fight and jumped and ran off, which prompted the elephant to throw his trunk in air, throw his head back, and make a noise.

I’ve always thought that was the elephant laughing at scaring the zebra.

Was it laughter or a dominance signal?

I have seen videos on YouTube where a bull elephant will toss or trample an elephant calf and throw their trunk in the air with the head back and make a noise.

"Was it laughter or a dominance signal?"

I would argue, laughter can be a dominance signal. The stronger laughs at the weaker one.

We may never know...

There are lots of stories I've heard of pet birds calling the dog using human voice for fun.

Number one question when reading this headline: which animals are in the list? Number two question: what does a laughing bird even look like? What do they laugh at? You want to see it, of course. There's none of that, bit of a disappointing article.

On the bright side, the article this article is about seems to contain at least the list of animals, see table 1: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/from-apes-to-birds-t...

This table of 65 animals is "play vocalizations", though, and includes animals like domestic cats and dogs. I've never seen a cat laugh at a situation, in real life or on the Internet, so it seems this arstecchnica article about "laughing animals" should be taken with a few grains of salt and is really more about playing and making a noise to indicate that they're playing (and shouldn't feel attacked) to their playmates.

I do like that humans are categorized with the great apes.

Linking the image / table referenced: https://www.tandfonline.com/na101/home/literatum/publisher/t...

Not an example from the wild, but our parrot (a caique) likes to laugh when he accomplishes a goal or encounters an unexpected challenge. I’m sure a lot of his use of laughter stems from living with humans though.

I have a caique that has a dark sense of humor. He laughs when he hears a put down or when something bad happens. His timing is hilarious.

Here's the url for the list: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/figure/10.1080/09524622.2021...

We have a cat they we allow outside sometimes. She doesn't have a sense of humour, but the local birds certainly act differently when she's outside. They sit just out of reach and squawk loudly at her. It doesn't seem to be a fear response. It could be a defensive mechanism of actively and continually watching the potential threat. But in my mind they're taunting and laughing at her.

There are bird species that use alarm calls to alert the presence of predators [1,2], some (including blue jays, another corvidae) even exhibit mobbing behaviour and will gang up (cooperating with other species!) to attack the predator [3].

[1] https://www.bl.uk/the-language-of-birds/articles/alarm-and-m...

[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/nuthatche...

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobbing_(animal_behavior)

My pet parrot definitly laughs. It sounds like a staccato clucking sound. He usually does it when he's lying on my belly playing with me. He lays on his back, both feet grabbing my finger (or fingers) and play-biting my finger with his beak. I've gotten to where I can do a pretty good imitation which I do when he's clearly playing. (he does sometimes get too agressive in his play, and I usually stop clucking when he pushes too far, but I doubt that registers with him.)

EDIT: Just for completeness, he's a Mitered Conure. Conure's are probably the most gregarious parrots I've encountered.

>>>laughter usually communicates something along the lines of “this is playtime—I’m not actually going for your throat.”

Sometimes, when hosting a meeting, I find myself laughing through a sentance when there's really nothing funny at all. I wonder to myself "what the hell was that?".

According to this article, it's probably my subconscious/instinct trying to put the audiance at ease or make the subject matter more "playful" than dry business and communicate that "it's OK to communicate freely - you're not going to be reprimanded".

However, that can also have reverse consequences when people subconsciously over-react and interpret that laugh that you think the subject work is a game and not serious, or that your role is a bit of a joke and they don't have to take you seriously. I will definitely keep this in mind going forward and try to control that awkward trait.

Some people, like my wife, will laugh a bit too often in formal communication, over banal things. If one didn't know better it would sound nervous. But I chalk this up to culture and upbringing. Apparently it's far less common in Germany to laugh after saying things, let alone your own jokes.

It's as you say, some people work hard to ensure everyone else feels at ease.

I've noticed in some cultures people break out into a giant grin when they are nervous or broaching a topic that makes them anxious. When I first encountered during a mild argument about something, I went from mild irritation to offended and demanded why the other person thought it was funny.

I definitely do this, but I had no idea that it makes people uncomfortable. Am from Texas.

I’m trying to rationalize this now... I guess I think of it as tension defusing? Definitely going to be more cognizant of this.

Unless you're cackling like our VP I think you're fine.

Hmmm, let me explain a little more. I'm from New England and we're generally pretty grim faced and direct in public. It's not good, I wish we were a happier society and I actually like going to places where people are honestly friendly and warm.

But when there is an issue of some kind, or I'm getting frustrated, that's when grins can make the situation worse. Sometimes there is a language barrier and the other party is not sure why there is frustration, and the default smile reaction (because they are nervous or to defuse the situation with a smile) is counterproductive.

Coming from the opposite direction, there is a theory of humor that basically says that what humans find funny are things that are not usually ok made ok.

This is also known and the "benign-violation theory"[1]. Things are funny when they should offend or violate (even at some simplistic level) but don't. Someone slips and falls? It can be funny as long as we judge them to be mostly unharmed.

Back into your context, and to reinforce what you said: it's possible you're instinctively trying to communicate that, as dry as the communication is, you're trying to add levity to the subject matter.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/funny-h...

Back at school we learned that the kind of laughter we do because someone slips and falls is because we are happy they are okay (stress relieve) and happy that it wasn’t us. No idea about an official source but it stuck with me ever since.

Yes, humor and laughter is a coping mechanism.

I’m guessing more cetaceans will get on this list as we learn more about them. They might have a very dark humor after all the generational trauma we’ve added to their existence.

For more, ethologist (animal-behaviorist) Frans de Waal writes engaging books (primates), as does Patricia McConnell (dogs), Jennifer Ackerman (birds), and Bernd Heinrich (insects, birds), amongst many others. Any you suggest?

I take the quotes around "laugh" to indicate that the word is being used analogously.

Laughter can be caused by the comprehension of an absurdity, a frustrated intention or by something that violates a norm. I would not readily ascribe this sort of comprehension to the aforementioned animals and would be careful not to anthropomorphize other species, as tempting as it might be.

Exactly, the original article linked at the bottom makes it clear that ars is full of bs and these animals are just indicating playfulness, like one kitten playing with another, not amusement or (as you better put it) comprehension of the absurdity of a situation.

Why would you think a self aware, fuzzy stealth killing machine has no concept of absurdity?

Concept implies abstraction and the mark of abstract thought is language.

Karl Popper's four functions of language might help here. Language has an expressive function, a signaling function, a descriptive function and an argumentative function. No other animal besides Man shows any sign of the anything but the first two, but it's the second two that require abstract concepts. These animals may very well possess imagination, but imagination is essentially concrete. You don't imagine Triangularity, but rather specific triangles (though in human beings, by virtue of having an intellect, the image of a triangle is "accompanied by" the concept of Triangularity).

Swimming by myself in the Sea of Cortez, I was surrounded by a pod of bottlenose dolphins. After observing me for a while, they suddenly started laughing, did a few flips and other acrobatic displays, and then swam away.

I was left in no doubt -- none whatsoever -- that they were laughing at the absurdity of what I evidently considered "swimming".

Maybe I'm anthropomorphizing them... but I'm pretty sure they were dolphopomorphizing me first, and it was cracking them up.

Anyhow, those dolphins were a bunch of punks.

They might have been protecting you from an unseen predator.

There have a been a few knows cases of it. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/nov/24/internationa...

My dog smiles when he is happy by showing his teeth. It is cute to me but some people think that he is angry because they apparently can't read his excitement.

I just think it is really fun to see every time he smiles and he does it pretty much daily, often when it's time for a walk or a run.

> laughter usually communicates something along the lines of “this is playtime—I’m not actually going for your throat.”

This is one of those things I read just before I had my first child, and I'm very glad I did. It made communicating with him easier -- him, obviously, not knowing English yet.

Awesome little tidbit of advice, will come in handy in the future. Thanks :)

Unfortunately that explanation is too simplistic. You laugh while you mock someone and they're disturbed by that. We also have many cases of gangs beating up random people while laughing.

We have phrases like "laughing at you" where the default assumption is negative, not positive.

If laughter communicates "I wanna play", then laughing while someone is afraid, or sad, or disturbed actually communicates something very sinister: "I wanna play, and you're my toy".

I suspect this angle is why in horror movies seeing playing children in odd contexts, or creepy dolls, or phrases like "wanna play a game" in Saw and so on is so effective. There's nothing more dehumanizing than realizing you're a plaything in the hands of a higher power that has zero regard for you as a life.

I would say it depends on the laughter.

Playful laughter indeed means "not going at someones throat"

(unless very psychopathic behavior)

We also have comedians making jokes about horrible things, allegedly in the spirit of laughing about the horrific as a way of processing it. Laughter in adult humans is certainly very complex.

For the purpose of communicating with a human baby (which is effectively like communicating with an exceptionally slow-witted chimpanzee) the simplistic idea served me well.

>> To reach this number ... searched ... for any mention of animals making noises during play sessions

Too arbitrary to search only for audible laughter. As though laughter were inconceivable amongst say humans without the capacity for vocalisation.

I would characterise laughter as a patterned break in any measurable intra-species communication channel. Immediately followed by reestablished communication at lowered tension. Laughter has to be cathartic.

Not easy to get enough big data, and labelling those patterns would be problematic. Yet it could be feasible. I imagine that we'd eventually be remarking upon species that lacked laughter as being exceptional.

Such an approach might help address long-term failures such as dolphin NLP. Rather than aiming to solve an entire species, instead aim to solve common communication patterns across many species.

My green cheek conure laughs at me all the time. Especially when he knows he's being bad.

On the other hand, how much do we know about "crying" in animals?

Lions seem to laugh, too, and aren't in the list: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyJUQuaECrg

The clip description gets it wrong but some comments recognize it. The laughing bit is near the end.

Youtube should be a gold mine for ethologists, maybe not for concrete data but at least for ideas for research.

That's 65 species that we know of, so far.

hehehehe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gx_jRfB-Ao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txGd0CxCPq0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQVhppRP4Wo

All the other animals just take things way too seriously

Maybe they just heard that one before.

Just curious, does GPT-3 laugh? Can it write “lol” or an equivalent when it would be appropriate in a conversation?

It is just exporting text based on a learned pattern, so if the training text guffaws, it will chortle in a similar way.

When they come across humans, they usually have nothing to laugh about anymore.

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