SCIENTIFIC PROOF

Sometimes scientists take it too seriously events like the laugh. According to a research of PortsmounthUniversity, in England, the origin of the laugh comes from games and jokes played already by our ancestors from 10 to 16 million years ago.

Dr. Marina Davila Ross, a primatologist from Psychology Department of this University, worked on the evolutionary origin of this human behavior and got to the conclusion that the laugh has humane roots. “It is very likely – she affirms – that the great apes use it to interact, like humans do”. According to the scientist, “this is important to the study of emotion in humans and animals and to the handling of primates in captivity and in the wild.”

Dr. Marina collected 800 records of three human babies and 22 species of great primates (orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos), some young and some older, who laughed after being tickled on hands, foot, neck and armpits. Then she compared the laugh of the four species, analyzed the acoustic and compared with the human laugh. Apart from the evident acoustic differences, the conclusion was that the laugh is not an exclusive human characteristic.

Similarities and differences of the laughs of each species correspond strictly to the relations seen at the evolutionary tree based on genetics. This is clear evidence that the laugh has its origin in a common ancestor. Therefore, when this scientist rebuilt the evolutionary tree, she put humans even closer to bonobos and chimpanzees, far from the gorillas and even more far away from the orangutans.

The study shows that the laugh evolved on primates gradually in the last 16 million years. If the humans laugh is clearly different from the laugh of apes, this is explained with the fact that the evolutionary changes had been faster in the last five million years.

Anyway, the study also showed an unexpectedly similarity. Gorillas and bonobos can laugh while expire the air slower than in normal breathe cycle, which demonstrates that they have some kind of control over their breath. Dr. Marina affirmed that until now this was considered to be ability exclusive of humans, which probably had an important role on the talk evolution.

Also worked together in this research:  Dr. Michael Owen, University of Georgia State, in Atlanta, and Professor Elke Zimmermann, from HannoverVeterinarianMedicineUniversity, in Germany. This one supported the research for HannoverNeuroscienceSystemsCenter.

The study has been published at magazine “Current Biology”.

Pedro Pozas Terrados, Director of GAP Project Spain