Speaker 1: Hey, please take a second and leave us a review
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot. Hey, welcome to Science Stuff, good production,
Speaker 1: enuff iHeartRadio. I'm hor hit Cham and today we are
Speaker 1: asking whether animals are funny. Well, we know they can
Speaker 1: be funny to us, but are they in on the joke?
Speaker 1: Do animals have a sense of humor? We're going to
Speaker 1: be talking to animal experts, including a scientist involved in
Speaker 1: the largest study ever done on whether animals joke around
Speaker 1: with each other. So to the laughter and come find
Speaker 1: the punchline with us as we answer the question to
Speaker 1: animals have a sense of humor? Enjoy. Hey everyone, We're
Speaker 1: gonna set up today's episode with a conversation with doctor
Speaker 1: Mark Beckoff about the argument that animals understand humor. As
Speaker 1: you'll hear, there hasn't been a lot of science looking
Speaker 1: into this question, but from what we know of animals,
Speaker 1: at least most mammals, doctor Beckhoff thinks animals should be
Speaker 1: able to get jokes or at least find some things funny.
Speaker 1: Here's my conversation with doctor Mark Beckoff. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: doctor Beckoff for joining us. My pleasure can you please
Speaker 1: te us your and what do you do?
Speaker 2: Yeah, my name is Mark Beckoff. I'm a professor of
Speaker 2: ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado and Boulder,
Speaker 2: and I'm interested in the general field of cognitive ethology,
Speaker 2: which is a study of animal minds, their thoughts, their feelings.
Speaker 2: You know, what's in them? How do they work? What
Speaker 2: do they know? What do they feel?
Speaker 1: Now, as I mentioned, there hasn't been a lot of
Speaker 1: science looking at humor in animals, but doctor Beckoff's fifty
Speaker 1: plus years studying animals tells them they surely must. Well,
Speaker 1: today we're interested in one particular coudient ability, which is
Speaker 1: humor and understanding humor and having a sense of humor.
Speaker 1: So we'll just open with a straight question, which is
Speaker 1: do you think animals have a sense of humor?
Speaker 2: You know, I think about it a lot. I think
Speaker 2: they do. In fact, I feel sure they have their
Speaker 2: own sort of species typical sense of humor, But like
Speaker 2: anything else, it's hard to know. I would say I'm
Speaker 2: sure they do, but we haven't quite done the studies
Speaker 2: that would show that.
Speaker 1: According to doctor Beckoff, a lot of people who own
Speaker 1: pets or spend a lot of time observing animals would
Speaker 1: say animals have a sense of humor, but so far
Speaker 1: this is mostly anecdotal. For instance, here are some examples
Speaker 1: of when doctor Becoff's dogs act that kind of funny.
Speaker 2: My dog Jethrow, I have some examples from him and
Speaker 2: other dogs with whom I lived. So one example was
Speaker 2: he used to run around when there were people there
Speaker 2: and maybe he wasn't getting the attention that he wanted.
Speaker 2: Oh you're not paying attention to me, run around shaking
Speaker 2: his rope or a towel or something in this and
Speaker 2: then stop and look to see if people were saying, Oh,
Speaker 2: isn't he cute or isn't that me?
Speaker 1: You know, it's a.
Speaker 2: Tension getting that way, I see, playing keep away. I mean,
Speaker 2: my dogs would do this all the time, run up
Speaker 2: with an object, sometimes a rope, you know, play tug
Speaker 2: a war, and the minute I would reach for the rope,
Speaker 2: they would run away and turn around to make sure
Speaker 2: that I'm looking at them.
Speaker 1: I see.
Speaker 2: So another example when I had two dogs defeating next
Speaker 2: to one another, and the dog who ate faster would
Speaker 2: have an empty bowlt and he would run to the
Speaker 2: front door bark, and then when the other dog came
Speaker 2: to see who was at the front door, and there
Speaker 2: wasn't anyone there. The first dog would go back and
Speaker 2: steal his food.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like there's some evidence there that the
Speaker 1: animal is aware that you have expectations about what's going
Speaker 1: to happen, and then the dog does something to subvert
Speaker 1: those expectations or kind of play with your expectations about
Speaker 1: what should happen.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: So this is the first clue that maybe animals do
Speaker 1: have a sense of humor. Psychologists think that humor, at
Speaker 1: least in humans, is based on the idea of having
Speaker 1: expectations about a situation and then having something break those expectations.
Speaker 1: It also has to do with having theory of mind,
Speaker 1: meaning having a sense of what other individuals are thinking
Speaker 1: and what they expect to happen. We know animals have
Speaker 1: both of those things. We made a whole episode about
Speaker 1: whether animals have consciousness a few months ago, so check
Speaker 1: that out if you want to learn more. But the
Speaker 1: problem in this case is that humor is particularly hard
Speaker 1: to verify. Why is it hard to prove that animals
Speaker 1: have a sense of humor?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, in one sense, just because you can't
Speaker 2: validate it. I can't say, well, you're trying to humor
Speaker 2: me or my friends.
Speaker 3: I see.
Speaker 1: So you're saying it's hard to validate because you can't
Speaker 1: ask the ad animal, did you do that because you
Speaker 1: think it was funny?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah. In other words, part of having a sense of
Speaker 1: humor is being funny on purpose. For example, you might
Speaker 1: say or do something that other people find funny, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean necessarily that you have a sense of humor.
Speaker 1: You might be doing it by accident, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to ask animals about their intentions. Now, you
Speaker 1: might be thinking, what if we see an animal laughing
Speaker 1: at something, wouldn't that mean they have a sense of humor?
Speaker 1: Is there any evidence that animals laugh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's been a lot of research on rodents rats
Speaker 2: who produce a vocalization that when you use a sonogram
Speaker 2: to look at sort of the components of the vocalization,
Speaker 2: it looks like human laughter. And there's some evidence that
Speaker 2: some great apes might laugh. Oh really, there's laughing hyaenas.
Speaker 2: You know, people have talked about laughing hyaenas.
Speaker 1: So there's vocalization, but is there evidence that it's a
Speaker 1: response to a subversion of expectation or is it just
Speaker 1: a vocalization that could mean something else.
Speaker 2: I don't think anybody's looked at that. That would be
Speaker 2: a really interesting study.
Speaker 1: I guess such a study as no laughing matter. Okay,
Speaker 1: joking aside. This did make me wonder if it would
Speaker 1: be possible to design an experiment that should you whether
Speaker 1: animals have a sense of humor or not. What would
Speaker 1: it take to do such an experiment, Like if you
Speaker 1: had to try to figure out if dogs have a
Speaker 1: sense of humor, what would that experiment look like? And
Speaker 1: I gave you ten million.
Speaker 2: Dollars, I would take the money and run.
Speaker 1: Now that's funny, doctor Beckoff, I know that would be
Speaker 1: my sense of humor.
Speaker 2: I mean, you really have to look at animals, but
Speaker 2: set it up to see whether, say, do they do
Speaker 2: things out of context that could be surprising with the
Speaker 2: intention of attracting other animals because they think what you're
Speaker 2: doing is interesting.
Speaker 1: For example, like if you see a dog severting the
Speaker 1: expectation of another dog for their pleasure for play, right.
Speaker 2: Or making the other individual inquisitive, you know, having them
Speaker 2: really go God, you know what's going on here?
Speaker 1: As it turns out, We're going to talk to another
Speaker 1: scientist in the next segment that was involved in a
Speaker 1: study that did just this experiment, So stick around for that.
Speaker 1: But first I wanted to ask doctor Beckoff, why would
Speaker 1: it make sense for animals to develop a sense of
Speaker 1: humor at all? What's the point of being funny? Why
Speaker 1: do you think humor has evolved in us and potentially
Speaker 1: going further back in other animals.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's enjoyable. It could be very positive,
Speaker 2: and it's fun to laugh. Laughing is good, smiling's good.
Speaker 2: It could be to alleviate a situation that could get nasty,
Speaker 2: to wait a pass time. So I may have seen
Speaker 2: this with wild wolves and dogs or free ranging dogs
Speaker 2: and coyotes and foxes who used to live in my
Speaker 2: neighborhood when I lived in the mountains. They just sometimes
Speaker 2: do something that it doesn't make any sense. The only
Speaker 2: tenable explanation is they're trying to humor another animal. They're
Speaker 2: trying to lighten up the load, let's go play. And
Speaker 2: there's been people who argue that having a sense of
Speaker 2: humor is common among social species because of this social
Speaker 2: effect it could have for increasing group cohesion. So I
Speaker 2: like that argument as an evolutionary biologist, because it would
Speaker 2: be surprising to think in gregarious social living non humans
Speaker 2: that those emotions, those capacities haven't evolved.
Speaker 1: I see it.
Speaker 2: Because they're really important for forming and maintaining groups.
Speaker 1: We know it has a social use. Humor has a
Speaker 1: social use in groups. So it would be our expectation
Speaker 1: that animals probably have a sense of humor. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: means it would be funny. If they didn't, would be funny,
Speaker 1: it would be odd. Okay, we're now going to get
Speaker 1: to the first ever scientific result that shows that non
Speaker 1: human animals can have a sense of humor. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to talk to one of the
Speaker 1: scientists involved in this study, which looked at a form
Speaker 1: of humor scientists call playful teasing. Do chimpanzees and a
Speaker 1: ragged tans joke around with each other? I kid you not.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that answer, so stay with us. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Okay, welcome back. We're talking about whether
Speaker 1: animals have a sense of humor, and so far we've
Speaker 1: talked about the argument for the idea that animals, at
Speaker 1: least social animals have evolved to be funny as a
Speaker 1: way to bond with each other. I mean, remember the
Speaker 1: last time someone told you a joke and you laughed
Speaker 1: a lot, you probably liked that person a little more
Speaker 1: or felt a little cl to them. But as we
Speaker 1: also talked about, there hasn't been a lot of science
Speaker 1: done to see if this argument is actually true until recently.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty four, scientists from the Universities of California,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, and San Diego published the result of one
Speaker 1: of the largest studies ever done that shows that non
Speaker 1: human animals do joke around. To tell us about this,
Speaker 1: I reached out to the lead author of the study,
Speaker 1: doctor Isabelle Lamer. Well, thank you, doctor Lahmer for joining
Speaker 1: us here.
Speaker 3: Welcome.
Speaker 1: Can you please tellus who you are and what do
Speaker 1: you do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, I'm a cognitive biologist and I'm currently working
Speaker 4: at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. So I'm
Speaker 4: basically studying intelligence and emotions in animals, specifically great apes.
Speaker 1: Doctor Lahmer and her colleagues doctor Sasha Winkler, Philrico Rossano,
Speaker 1: and Erica Cartmeil looked at the behavior of four different
Speaker 1: great aid species to see if they showed signs they
Speaker 1: had a sense of humor. Now, as we talked about before,
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to ask an animal to tell
Speaker 1: you something funny, or to tell them a joke and
Speaker 1: see if they laugh. So doctor Lahmer and her colleagues
Speaker 1: looked at a behavior related to humor called playful teasing.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 4: Playful teasing so, for example, often and withdrawal in children.
Speaker 4: So basically, when a child actually offers you an object
Speaker 4: and the mother, for example, is reaching for it, but
Speaker 4: in the second as the mother actually reaches for it,
Speaker 4: this child draws the object back and laughs and looks
Speaker 4: at the mother. Yeah, and this can happened repeatedly, right, So,
Speaker 4: playful teasing is basically when you tease someone for fun.
Speaker 1: You might poke at them playfully or offer them something
Speaker 1: they want and then yank it away at the last second.
Speaker 1: It's playful behavior, but it shows a certain sense of humor.
Speaker 3: So playful teasing requires similar cognitive processes.
Speaker 1: What did you mean by that? What cognitive abilities.
Speaker 4: That you anticipate others responses, like as I mentioned with
Speaker 4: the offer and withdrawal. Actually, there is quite a lot
Speaker 4: of things going on in the brain during that because
Speaker 4: in the moment that the child actually presents the object,
Speaker 4: it knows that the mother will reach for it, so
Speaker 4: it will kind of foresee the action right that the
Speaker 4: mother will reach for it. And it knows also in
Speaker 4: this moment that when I draw it back, I will
Speaker 4: create a moment of surprise in the mother. I see,
Speaker 4: so this is actually what makes it funny, right, while
Speaker 4: the child then also laughs, I'm kind of surprising you
Speaker 4: with my action. I'm pretending to give it to you,
Speaker 4: but actually I'm drawing it back to see you surprise.
Speaker 1: So playful teasing is a form of humor because it
Speaker 1: requires you to know that the other individual is expecting something,
Speaker 1: and it also requires you to know what it's expected.
Speaker 4: Also understanding social norms, so I need to know what
Speaker 4: is allowed what is not allowed. I mean children, for example,
Speaker 4: tis a lot by actually doing things that are not.
Speaker 1: Allowed, right, and they find that funny.
Speaker 3: Yes, children usually.
Speaker 4: Laugh by doing things that are not allowed, like, for example,
Speaker 4: reaching towards a hot stove even though they know that
Speaker 4: it's not allowed, but just reaching into that direction, checking
Speaker 4: the mother's face, and then quickly drawing the hand back,
Speaker 4: you know, and doing that repeatedly kind of in a
Speaker 4: provocatis way.
Speaker 1: I have to sort of think about what's going to
Speaker 1: happen in the future, and I also have to put
Speaker 1: myself in the mindset of the other person or the
Speaker 1: other individual.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is called gury of mind.
Speaker 1: And you said, we see this in pre verbal infants,
Speaker 1: meaning like really really young kids.
Speaker 4: Yes, it starts at the age of eight months already.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see, at eight months, you're already a pain
Speaker 1: in the bud.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And to some extent, yes, at.
Speaker 1: Eight months you're already spressing out your mother on purpose.
Speaker 1: In other words, you can think of playful teasing as
Speaker 1: joking around. I see it's a Q and I engaged
Speaker 1: in an interaction and we both find it funny, or
Speaker 1: only one of us find it funny.
Speaker 3: I mean, it can go both ways, right.
Speaker 4: It can be teazing that is more on the provocative side,
Speaker 4: which just one party finds funny and interesting while the
Speaker 4: other party is really annoyed. But oftentimes this also can
Speaker 4: lead to mutual enjoyment as well.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, And doctor Lahmer argues this joking around has
Speaker 1: a purpose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this also brings you actually to the function of teasing,
Speaker 3: which is actually that there's mutual enjoyment and the social
Speaker 3: bonds are strengthened, so teazing is a form to basic
Speaker 3: Kelly strengthen their relationship.
Speaker 1: And so doctor Lahmer and her colleagues try to see
Speaker 1: if you could find playful teasing in a four species
Speaker 1: of great apes, warnables, rangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees.
Speaker 4: So we basicallyly set out to find instances of teasing
Speaker 4: in videos. Actually, so we were basically looking through a
Speaker 4: bunch of videos to find events that were basically neither
Speaker 4: aggression nor play, but something in between.
Speaker 1: According to doctor Lammer, scientists had studied teasing before, where
Speaker 1: one animal pokes at another animal as a form of
Speaker 1: aggression or bullying, and they had also studied playfulness before,
Speaker 1: which is when two animals played together, But playful teasing
Speaker 1: is something different.
Speaker 4: So researchers, for example, they were studying agonistic forms of
Speaker 4: cheesing like harassment or bullying, but never.
Speaker 3: The playful side of teasing.
Speaker 4: The playful side was kind of usually studied to as play,
Speaker 4: but playful teas is not play.
Speaker 3: It's a different behavior.
Speaker 4: So it's kind of in the gray zone between play
Speaker 4: and aggression. That's why we really put a lot of
Speaker 4: effort in developing a coding scheme that would actually show
Speaker 4: exactly what playful teasing is. And we developed certain criterias
Speaker 4: to define playful teasing.
Speaker 1: What the third lumber is saying is that to study
Speaker 1: the videos of the four species of apes, she and
Speaker 1: her colleagues came up with a checklist or a list
Speaker 1: of criteria of what counts as playful teasing or joking around.
Speaker 1: So then you made a definition of playful teasing. What
Speaker 1: was in that definition, like, what was the criteria?
Speaker 4: So the criteria of playful teasing is that the teasing
Speaker 4: is actually one sided, so as a metrical so from
Speaker 4: one individual towards the other. That it has playful elements
Speaker 4: but also provocative in elements. One important aspect is also
Speaker 4: that after the teasing action is basically performed, that the
Speaker 4: actor is actually usually looking towards the target, so they
Speaker 4: are interested in the reaction of the other, really interested
Speaker 4: in the reaction of the other. And another criteria is
Speaker 4: that the behavior is repetitive usually and also especially when
Speaker 4: the target is not reacting.
Speaker 3: They also do elaboration of behavior.
Speaker 4: That means that they show different forms of behavior, so
Speaker 4: the behavior is also very flexible.
Speaker 1: I see, like if the other individual doesn't react, they'll
Speaker 1: try it again in a different way.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly so.
Speaker 4: And oftentimes there's even they might start with a poke,
Speaker 4: then it might become a hit. If that doesn't lead
Speaker 4: to anything, they might even then jump.
Speaker 3: On the individual.
Speaker 4: So sometimes we could also observe instances like.
Speaker 1: This, I see, I feel like you're almost asking, can
Speaker 1: animals be annoying on purpose?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean there is definitely an annoying component to it.
Speaker 1: Yes, being funny can be annoying sometimes if you're interested
Speaker 1: in seeing what this humorous, playful teasing behavior actually looks like.
Speaker 1: Doctor Lahmer has posted clips of these videos on her
Speaker 1: YouTube channel YouTube dot com slash doctor Isabel Lammer.
Speaker 4: Of course, we don't know about the internal world right,
Speaker 4: about the emotions that they feel while they do that,
Speaker 4: But this is all stuff for future work to look
Speaker 4: into that. But for that you would also meet other methods.
Speaker 4: So this was just the initial study to really show
Speaker 4: that our closest relatives also do show forms of humor,
Speaker 4: because before no one was actually speaking about humor in animals,
Speaker 4: at least not from a science perspective, right, So.
Speaker 1: Doctor Lamber and her colleagues did this study, and now
Speaker 1: the question is what did they find do apes display
Speaker 1: a sense of humor or playful teasing? When we come back,
Speaker 1: I'll ask doctor Lammer what they found and what does
Speaker 1: all means about whether animals have a sense of humor?
Speaker 1: In other words, what's the puchline? So to stay with us,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Hey, welcome back. We're talking about
Speaker 1: whether animals have a sense of humor or whether it's
Speaker 1: only people that are intentionally funny. To answer this question,
Speaker 1: doctor Isabelle Lahmer and her colleagues did one of the
Speaker 1: first and largest studies of playful teasing in great apes,
Speaker 1: looking at the behavior of bonaboes, orangutans, chimpanzees, and gorillas.
Speaker 1: As we talked about, playful teasing is a very specific
Speaker 1: behavior that the researchers argue requires you to have a
Speaker 1: sense of humor, or at least it uses the same
Speaker 1: cognitive abilities as having a sense of humor. It's basically
Speaker 1: joking around. Now, the question is what did they find
Speaker 1: in this study? So what did you find in this
Speaker 1: study that you did with your colleagues. What were the results?
Speaker 4: We found that all four species of great apes playfully teased,
Speaker 4: So in the bonobos, in the chimpanzees and the gorillas
Speaker 4: and the orangutans, they all showed similar forms of teasing.
Speaker 4: So we found eighteen different teasing behaviors, and all of
Speaker 4: those behaviors were provocative. They were intentional, involved, often playful.
Speaker 4: Elements were asymmetric, and when they did a teasing action
Speaker 4: that they actually also checked, you know, how the target
Speaker 4: was reacting.
Speaker 1: Yes, the researchers found that apes do joke around, and
Speaker 1: they saw one of the total signs that they are
Speaker 1: joking around, which is that when one animal would tease another,
Speaker 1: they would look back and check to see how the
Speaker 1: other animal reacted, as if they were saying, huh, huh,
Speaker 1: what do you think is that funny? The researchers also
Speaker 1: found that this behave we're usually happened during particular moments
Speaker 1: in the apes' lives.
Speaker 4: What we also found is that playful teasing, similar to
Speaker 4: teasing and infants, also occurs during relaxed contexts.
Speaker 1: What does that mean that they usually.
Speaker 3: Do it when they are, for example, resting or sleeping
Speaker 3: and the group is basically quite calm nice?
Speaker 4: Then is actually the time usually when you can observe behaviors.
Speaker 1: Like this interesting? Does that tell you that they do
Speaker 1: it out of boredom maybe, or some form of boredom.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean even Shane Goodle already described in one
Speaker 3: of her books when she studied the Gombat chimpanzees that
Speaker 3: adult chimpanzees were basically resting and juveniles were then playfully
Speaker 3: jumping on them while the others were resting, you know,
Speaker 3: and from behind. So I mean this is apparently a
Speaker 3: thing eventually.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's definitely a thing in my house when
Speaker 1: my kids were younger, it was hard to get some rest, yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in general, yeah, yeah, And it often also happens
Speaker 4: then for example, two individuals are engaged in a certain behavior.
Speaker 4: For example, two apes are booming each other and the
Speaker 4: teaser is actually then disturbing. This is also similar to
Speaker 4: teasing and infants, right, because the mother might read a book, right,
Speaker 4: and in a moment, the child, for example, puts the hand.
Speaker 3: In the book. Yeah, and does that repeatedly, you know,
Speaker 3: to tindle.
Speaker 1: I mean that's part of the fun, yeah, yeah, to
Speaker 1: interrupt somebody while they're doing something. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And apes also had stealing, for example, of objects, and
Speaker 4: this was not just like I steal something and then
Speaker 4: use it myself, but this was actually for example, one
Speaker 4: ape was using a tool for expecting food for example,
Speaker 4: and the other, for example, was then actually taking.
Speaker 3: The tool away, like stealing the tool.
Speaker 4: But then immediately let go of it and looking at
Speaker 4: the target basically a guy. So it's basically stealing without
Speaker 4: needing the object itself and without using it afterwards by myself,
Speaker 4: but just for it to see the reaction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing. Doctor Lamber and her colleagues observe eighteen different
Speaker 1: kinds of playful teasing in apes, and to be honest,
Speaker 1: some of these do sound hilarious.
Speaker 4: I mean the top five were poking of course, hitting
Speaker 4: a hindering movement when they would actually for.
Speaker 3: Example, one ape was going by and the other would
Speaker 3: quickly catch the foot and pull on it. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we had quite a lot of instances like that.
Speaker 4: Also often a surprise. Many of the teasing events included
Speaker 4: an element of surprise.
Speaker 1: I mean that's also part of the fun. Okay, so
Speaker 1: great apes do engage in playful teasing behavior, but does
Speaker 1: that mean they understand humor?
Speaker 4: There are some anecdote observations of joke like behaviors in
Speaker 4: great apes. Maybe you know the gorilla named Coco that
Speaker 4: already died, and Penny Patterson. She basically taught Coco how
Speaker 4: to do the sign language and to communicate in sign language,
Speaker 4: and it apparently happened a couple of times that Coco
Speaker 4: was answering to Penny wrongly even though she knew the
Speaker 4: correct answer. For example, Penny was asking, Hey, what did
Speaker 4: do you put on your toothbrush? And then Coco was
Speaker 4: actually signing not toothpaste, but she would sign, for example,
Speaker 4: foot and.
Speaker 1: Laugh at Coco last. Yes.
Speaker 4: Yes, But also, I mean, we need to be a
Speaker 4: little bit careful also because the training history is not
Speaker 4: fully known, like behaviors like that were rewarded in the past.
Speaker 4: So that's why we need to be a little bit cautious.
Speaker 4: But I personally believe that probably she found it funny,
Speaker 4: but I mean we don't.
Speaker 3: Know for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds funny. Brushing your teeth with foot
Speaker 1: is yeah, yeah, classic humor in my household. Now I
Speaker 1: know what you're thinking. You're probably thinking, I see my
Speaker 1: chihuahua chuckle, my cockitoo cackle. Cond Doctor Lamer and her
Speaker 1: colleagues figure out if other animals have a sense of humor.
Speaker 3: So the first thing I.
Speaker 4: Would do is would look more closely at other primates
Speaker 4: other than great apes, and then also at animals that
Speaker 4: also live in very complex social groups and that are
Speaker 4: also very smart, like for example, prots and kobe. I
Speaker 4: mean they are even though they have very small brain.
Speaker 4: Research found they have the same neural number as primates
Speaker 4: as well, like also dolphins for example. Yeah, I would
Speaker 4: first look at these animals. And of course I also
Speaker 4: was a cat owner and also a dog owner, and yeah,
Speaker 4: again this needs to be really studied, and.
Speaker 1: You need to start looking up cat jokes.
Speaker 4: I think if the people that listen actually have instances
Speaker 4: above teasing observed.
Speaker 3: In their animals.
Speaker 4: So Erica Cardinal that I was working on the teasing
Speaker 4: study in grade eight, so she actually has a homepage
Speaker 4: where she is collecting examples of teasing. So if you,
Speaker 4: as a listener, have an animal at home that is
Speaker 4: actually repeatedly provocatively teasing you, this would be a good
Speaker 4: time to actually record yourself and the animal and send
Speaker 4: it to Erica's website.
Speaker 1: Oh incredible, We're recruiting test subjects right now.
Speaker 3: If people are interested.
Speaker 1: Yeah, will I get my name in the paper. I'm
Speaker 1: just teasing you. I'm just teasing. Okay, the last question
Speaker 1: I had for doctor Lamer was, what is the fact
Speaker 1: that animals might have a sense of humor? See about us?
Speaker 1: What does that mean for us as humans? Does that
Speaker 1: mean that a lot of our behaviors have been there
Speaker 1: for a really long time? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean, since we found playful teasing in all four
Speaker 3: great ape species, so that means likely that our last
Speaker 3: common ancestor, which lived thirteen million years ago, also showed
Speaker 3: similar forms of playful teasing.
Speaker 4: So it actually says it shows something about our evolutionary
Speaker 4: past sentence. I feel like that humans think, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: they're so special, but actually, when you look more closely
Speaker 4: into cognition in great apes, there are many similarities. So
Speaker 4: we are more similar than we are different.
Speaker 1: All right, So to recap, there's an argument to be
Speaker 1: made that animals and social groups should have a sense humor,
Speaker 1: and at least in great aids, we can see that
Speaker 1: they do get around with each other. All of this
Speaker 1: means I think that the idea that humans are the
Speaker 1: only ones that find things funny, i'd just be a
Speaker 1: bad joke. I mean, talk about a punchline. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us, See you next time you've been listening to
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