Laughter...What Is It?

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Racoon

This is in Medical Science because Laughter IS THE BEST MEDICINE!

I am very curious about the Human brain as of late (incl. Memory)

What makes something "Funny" ?
Why can Humans Laugh? as opposed to other animals not being able to do such. - another thing that seperates us from the rest of the Natural Kingdom of Life. ...

Apparently, animals do laugh. Seems there is a new indication of a common evolutionary origin for laughter in humans and great apes.

Current Biology - Reconstructing the Evolution of Laughter in Great Apes and Humans

Originally Posted by Marina Davila Ross1,2,,,Michael J Owren3andElke Zimmermann2

Reconstructing the Evolution of Laughter in Great Apes and Humans
Summary
Human emotional expressions, such as laughter, are argued to have their origins in ancestral nonhuman primate displays [1,2,3,4,5,6]. To test this hypothesis, the current work examined the acoustics of tickle-induced vocalizations from infant and juvenile orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos, as well as tickle-induced laughter produced by human infants. Resulting acoustic data were then coded as character states and submitted to quantitative phylogenetic analysis. Acoustic outcomes revealed both important similarities and differences among the five species. Furthermore, phylogenetic trees reconstructed from the acoustic data matched the well-established trees based on comparative genetics. Taken together, the results provide strong evidence that tickling-induced laughter is homologous in great apes andhumans and support the more general postulation of phylogeneticcontinuity from nonhuman displays to human emotional expressions. Findings also show that distinctivelyhuman laughter characteristics such as predominantly regular, stable voicing and consistently egressive airflow are nonetheless traceable to characteristics of shared ancestors with great apes.

News Story: >> Ha-Ha! Ape study traces evolution of laughter - washingtonpost.com

[lemit]

Humor is irony. When I was in school and needed to write a paper on no particular subject, I always picked humor and comedy, because the research was a lot of fun. I suspect the teachers enjoyed reading something that could make them laugh, because I always got an A. (Of course, naturally writing an inverted pyramid probably helped too.)

So anyway, humor is irony. If you want to jump-start it, add surprise. That is why the sight of someone falling elicits laughter. It's inappropriate laughter, and can be a bad sign. Laughter at inappropriate moments can be a sign of brain trauma. In the way that people who have had strokes will occasionally cry when someone smiles at them or simply says "Hello," a laugh when it's not called for is a little hint that something might be wrong.

A strange thing I've noticed over the years is that if I write something with the greatest simplicity and clarity possible, people will think I'm joking. Think about that a while: simple, clear, direct language is so unusual, such a surprise, such a change from what is normal that it makes people laugh. That almost makes me cry.

(Another strange thing: in the two or three hours I've spent today editing and rewriting the "What Are We Afraid Of?" post, I've laughed out loud almost every time I've reread it. Ah, my favorite writer. If laughter is a medicine, would that be considered self-medication?)

--lemit