Do animals ever behave as if they demonstrating a sense of humor? For example, when chimps they chuck their feces at people (assuming this isn’t a myth), do they “laugh”, or do something similar?
What about other animals?
We had a parakeet once who very carefully read the paper lining his cage, deciding which politician’s picture to … um… defecate on.
They “chortle.” (Like I’m doing now).
I had a cat who when I tried to corral him, to take to the vet or something, would watch me approach to within a foot of grabbing distance then bolt. He would then sit ten feet away to see if I would try again. He could have just gone and hid in a bush, but he preferred taunting me. I’m sure he thought it was funny.
Could you define “humor”, please?
As far as I know, most mammals enjoy playing “games”. Primates (us included) are prone to deceive other fellow primates in order to get food, or sex, but I don’t know if they have fun doing it (well, we humans do!).
Sometimes “humor” can be defined as the joy we get from someone else’s disgrace, or pain. As the humor in most jokes.
Is that the kind of humor you are talking about?
They “guffaw,” too.
Nickrz: they chortle, they guffaw…but do they “titter”?
“Can I join you ladies…into one big lady?” - Groucho Marx
My cat Rosie delights in walking directly through complexly set up board games. I presume she snickers about it afterwards, or else she conceals it beneath her usual air of cynical urbane disaffectedness, after the manner of Dorothy Parker. (Yes, I am a cat person.)
[[Do animals ever behave as if they demonstrating a sense of humor? For example, when chimps they chuck their feces at people (assuming this isn’t a myth), do they “laugh”, or do something similar?
What about other animals?]]
Thee’s not likely any way to prove it, but I have little doubt that higher mammals, at least, have a rudimentary sense of humor, based on my experience.
Well, now, Tom. Which group would you rather have running through your courtroom? A “smattering of giggles”
or a “ripple of titters”?
I believe Koko, the famous sign-language gorrilla, refered to a fellow gorilla as a “stinky bad toilet” (or something similar). Don’t know if she was joking.
I was talking to my next door neighbour, who swears that his parrot called the (prior) dog (“Kiki! Kiki!”), the dog came to the call of his name, and the parrot would bite his ear and then laugh hysterically. The dog (described by my neighbour as stupidest ever, kept coming back for the same treatment, time and again, and the parrot laughed so hard he “almost falls off the perch.”
Could be crap, of course, I haven’t seen it, it’s a neighbour, though, not a FOAF.
…Fits of insane cackling
Apart from trying to decide if animals giggle or laugh (sic!), it could boil down to “what is humor?”
E1skeptic
A couple of years ago, I visited a bear park in the north of Sweden. It was early summer and the cubs were just out, fooling around. This park has 1000’s of acres of forest for the bears to roam, and is not a zoo, where the animals learn to play to the audience for peanuts. The first few weeks after the cubs are out, they are in a very large compound, and the only way to see them is to walk about 100 feet up in the air, on a walkway, so not to disturb them. Access for tourists is kinda restricted. I just wanted to get the settings straight here.
As I stood there, watching the cubs play around, two of them walked over to a pool. One decided to stand by the edge on its hind legs and the other got an idea.
Ha backed a little an deliberately pushed the other cub into the pool, after which he himself feel backwards and rolled around and made grunting noises (laughing?).
You make up your own minds. I am convinced he did it for fun. If that means he has a sense of humor? Again, what is humor?
ct
When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout