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Is the animal kingdom oblivious to our jokes or just a really tough crowd? Bill Nye explores the link between intelligence and humor.It’s a question you ask yourself every time your best material fails to register in the eyes of a Labrador. Do animals other than humans have a sense of humor, or is it only human intelligence that can foster the inclination to be funny and recognize funny things?
Many animals show signs of laughter or exhibit an ability to have fun. Bill Nye references penguins who stand at the top of an icy slope and belly-slide down – he can think of no evolutionary purpose for that, they just seem to have fun doing it.
So back to that uncooperative Labrador. In 1949, Konrad Lorenz (Nobel Prize-winning ethnologist and author of Man Meets Dog) suggested that dogs are capable of laughing. When you play with a dog, you may notice a huffing and panting that can sometimes be a little alarming, seem aggressive and might scare those unfamiliar with dogs. But Lorenz believed this to be the dog version of laughter. Even earlier, and possibly one of the first to write on the subject, was Charles Darwin with his 1872 book The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. In that book Darwin suggested that some great apes, like chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans, produce laugh-like sounds during play, and this was later second-motioned by Jane Goodall.
It makes sense considering our close evolutionary relationship with primates, and their relatively high level of intellectual standing within in the animal kingdom. Psychologist Marina Davila-Ross of the University of Portsmouth in the UK analyzed digital recordings of great apes being tickled, as well as samples of human laughter, and found the species that were closest to humans (chimps and bonobos) had the most laughter-like panting, while gorillas and orangutans, who are more distantly related to humans, pant more primitively. So there is some evidence for a link between evolution and a vocalized reaction to humor.
The tickle test (or ‘heterospecific hand play’, if you want to be a button-down scientist about it) seems to be the popular way to measure the LOL ability of animals, and that’s exactly how laughter has been provoked in another species – rats.
Estonian-born neuroscientist and psychobiologist Jaak Panksepp had the idea to test rats after conducting a study of laughter and play in humans. He recalls the morning after the human study: “I came to the lab and asked my undergraduate assistant at the time to come tickle some rats with me,” he says. The results of the ensuing tickle fest revealed rat laughter presents as high-frequency 50-kilohertz ultrasonic chirps that are notably unique from other vocal sounds emitted by rats.
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BILL NYE, THE SCIENCE GUY
Bill Nye, scientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor, is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work. Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing most of his life. In Seattle Nye began to combine his love of science with his flair for comedy, when he won the Steve Martin look-alike contest and developed dual careers as an engineer by day and a stand-up comic by night. Nye then quit his day engineering day job and made the transition to a night job as a comedy writer and performer on Seattle’s home-grown ensemble comedy show “Almost Live.” This is where “Bill Nye the Science Guy®” was born. The show appeared before Saturday Night Live and later on Comedy Central, originating at KING-TV, Seattle’s NBC affiliate. While working on the Science Guy show, Nye won seven national Emmy Awards for writing, performing, and producing. The show won 18 Emmys in five years. In between creating the shows, he wrote five children’s books about science, including his latest title, “Bill Nye’s Great Big Book of Tiny Germs.” Nye is the host of three currently-running television series. “The 100 Greatest Discoveries” airs on the Science Channel. “The Eyes of Nye” airs on PBS stations across the country.
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TRANSCRIPT
Peter: Hello Bill. My name is Peter. I live in Miami and my question has to do with the sense of humor. It seems logical that sense of humor is a sign of higher intelligence mainly because it usually involves more than one person. And so my question is is there any evidence that any other animal other than man has a sense of humor? Thanks.
Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/bill-nye-on-the-link-between-humor-and-intelligence