SCIENTISTS TRACE ORIGINS OF HUMAN LAUGHTER... BY TICKLING BABY APES
Baby orangutan Naru is tickled in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo
By Emily Garnham for express.co.uk
WE ALL love a good giggle.
And now new research shows that laughter isn't just a human trait.
Our
ability to guffaw has been traced back to the last common ancestor of
humans and great apes - as much as 16 million-years-ago.
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Experts
reconstructed the origins of laughter by mapping the sounds of 22
infant apes and three human babies being tickled on an evolutionary
tree.
Dr Marina Davila Ross, Primatologist at the University of
Portsmouth, took 800 recordings as their palms, feet, necks and armpits
were tickled.
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BREAKTHROUGH: Dr Marina Davila Ross in Zambia
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Despite acoustic differences between human
laughter and that of the orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos
studied, the results prove laughter is not a uniquely human trait,
according to Dr Davila Ross.
She
explained the similarities and differences in patterns of laughter
sounds between apes and humans corresponded closely to the relationship
between the species as mapped out in the genetic evolutionary trees.
She
said: "Our results on laughter indicate it's pre-human basis. It is
likely that great apes use laughter sounds to interact in similar ways
to humans.
"This is important for emotional research in humans
and animals as well as for the management of primates in captivity and
in the wild."
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It is likely that great apes use laughter sounds to interact in similar ways to humans.
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Dr Marina Davila Ross, Primatologist
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Her findings show that laughter has evolved gradually during the last 10 to 16 million years of primate evolutionary history.
But
she said that human laughter was clearly distinct from the laughter of
great apes because evolutionary changes had been more rapid in the last
five million years.
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Dr Davila Ross said that an unexpected similarity had been found between humans and gorillas and bonobos.
She
explained that these apes were able to make laughter sounds while
breathing out for up to four times the length of their normal breathing
cycle.
This showed that they had some control over their
breathing - an ability which was thought to be unique to humans, Dr
Davila Ross said.
The breakthrough study - carried out with Dr
Michael Owren from Georgia State University, Atlanta, and Professor
Elke Zimmermann at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hannover,
Germany, has been published in Current Biology.
Dr Davila Ross’s
previous study, published in 2007, showed that orangutans’ facial
expressions during social play revealed a sense of mimicry, an
essential part of laughter.
