Thanks Clothahump, that’s the one! I got all my facts totally wrong, they’re not apes but monkeys, they’re not lions but tigers*. But it still seems like a sense of humour.
Tim R. Mortiss, my dog does the same thing, and I was thinking of that. But that got me to wondering about the difference between “play” and “sense of humour”. Because it’s obviously a game, it’s fun because you need to continue to chase. But is that the same as a sense of humour?
But which one would win in a fight? Hmmm? :dubious:
Gorillas absolutely do. When I volunteered with them at the zoo they’d scare you for the fun of it and obviously think it was hilarious. They’re dicks, which is what’s so cool about them - they have real personalities. (Bad ones.)
One time the bigger male, who wasn’t usually a damned jackass, got into his overhead transfer just as I was about to walk under it. Now, it’s built to hold a gorilla but that thing creaks when he gets in it and I just don’t like to walk under it, so I wait. And he looks at me. And I look at him. And I retreat a bit so he can go on his merry way and he slams his fist into the bottom of the transfer - BANG! I shrieked like a little girl and he was all “Oh yeah, baby” and went on about his business with I swear an honest to god smirk. It was the funniest damned thing, once I got over my heart attack.
I read a science article not long ago about chimpanzees (or maybe bonobos) laughing. When tickled, they laugh (but both on the inhale and exhale, whereas humans only laugh on the exhale, and so we tend not to recognize it as laughter). They also sometimes do that sort of laughing after some sort of slapstick moment.
How you do define a sense of humour anyway? A lot of animals appear to have a sense of ‘fun’, but half the things we find funny just don’t work with no language. How can you really tell if your dog’s finding something funny when it looks happy after doing something silly, or if it’s just happy that you’re enjoying something it did?
I remember reading about an octopus who would squirt people entering the lab, then sink back into his tank, changing colors (the lab people had come to recognize this as his “giggle”).
Ooh! I’d love to hear more on your take on dolphin personalities and intelligence and how they relate to humans. Would you mind starting an Ask The Former Dolphin Researcher- thread?
On searching Youtube, I found this clip. It’s about a trainer teaching dogs, cats and a dolphin how to play dead when he points a finger gun at them. Two things are amazing about that clip:
they found at leat three cats willing to learn it, however lukewarm
The Dolphin and the German shepherd seem to really enjoy it, some other dogs, do too, some dogs just have that eager “This is hard! Am I doing this okay, boss?”- look on their faces.
The German Shepherd plays a really ornate dying scene, spoilt only by his vigerously wagging tail in the first few second;
3 I don’t believe you can teach a squirrel or a guinea pig anything, and I’m still not convinced they shoot them with a dart somewheree off camera.
My horse has a sense of humour. if I’m brushing his front legs/picking out his front hooves, he bites my butt, if I look at him, he looks over the stable door, then looks at me with all innocent like. When I’m tending to his back legs he farts and/or tries to poo on my head (nearly succeeded one time!).
Clancey is a legend in my neighborhood. He claims to be an overgrown white French poodle, but I say he’s a pony disguised as a poodle. When you see Clancey on the street, he jumps all over you.
The first time I saw Clancey after getting a full cast on my arm, I told him “I can’t get near you and pat you, cause you’ll jump on me and I don’t want to get hurt.” He looked at me, sat down and got the most innocent look on his face “Jump on you? I would never think of doing such a thing?” I started patting him, and he got the funniest grin on his face.
I don’t know about other pony dogs, but Clancey makes me laugh.
I dunno, one of our cats possesses a digestive tract that turns cat food into something with near-lethal noxiousness. (Oddly, our other cat, who eats the exact same food, turns out nearly odorless, almost dainty little poops.) He also likes to leave it uncovered so as to share the malodorous joy as efficiently as possible. Anyway, Al will sometimes walk into the living room, and just stand there, staring silently. Eventually, one of us will go, “Hey, buddy. What’s up? Whatcha lookin’ at, Al. You want a scrit— OH MY GAWD!!” and Al will turn around, twitch his tail, and saunter off.
I swear, he’s like a frat boy. "Wait for it … waaaaaaaait for it …
Gah :smack: :smack: Now I’m wrong about being wrong about monkeys. I’d say “ignorance fought”, but I’m pretty sure there is some more where that came from…
I agree it’s probably nearly impossible in most cases to distinguish between “sense of humour” and “fun playing”. I think that in some cases it can be distinguished in monkey-ape-things*, for example when they play a prank and there is surprise involved to make it funny.
And I’m seconding: Senegoid, can we have an Ask The thread please?
One of our dogs, Sienna, has taught herself to play the “Flat Tire” game. Since we live in south Florida, we are in flip flops most of the time. Early on she learned that she can make us stumble by planting her paw on the back of a sandal as we take a step and make us trip. She does this occasionally, despite plenty of correction on the issue. She also seems to do it far more often to guests, who are less likely to scold her. Every time she pulls it off, she runs away wagging with a big doggy grin on her face. She also likes to mess up the chase games of the other, younger dogs. At times they will be running back and forth with a toy. Sienna will get up from her spot, lay down directly in the game path and wait for one of the other dogs to notice her. Ramming into her is not an option since she’s larger then the other two and will take their toy away. They try to dodge, but always slip up on the hardwood, spin out and crash. After the inevitable fall, she’ll get back up and saunter over to her spot again, wagging. 'Nenna is a dick.
Not sure if its a ‘sense of humour’ or not but one of my cats used to amuse himself by sitting just out of range of my chained up sheep dog (a border collie). The angrier she got the more it seemed to amuse him, he would casually start cleaning himself or look around as if bored of all the drama!
I was sorely tempted to one day lengthen the chain just to see his reaction, though I was afraid she might actually catch him…and, well, animals may or may not have a sense of humour but I’m fairly sure they understand the concept of revenge.
Well, let me think about that a while. For the record, I was a lowly part-time lab assistant, not a professorial researcher or a grad student or even any kind of student, so I wasn’t really in the “inner circles” of the profession. And also, this was almost 30 years ago.
When I was about eight-ish, we had a pet rat who loved to tease the cats. While his cage was being cleaned, he got to run around the floor in a ventilated plastic ball, and he’d run right up to the cats (who were going nuts trying to figure out how to get him), and I swear he had a “hahaha, you can’t get me!” smirk on his face.
