Human Laughter Up To 16 Million Years Old

An anonymous reader writes "Published today in the journal Current Biology, a new study shows that laughter is not a unique human trait, but a behavior shared by all great apes. Tickle a baby chimpanzee and it will giggle just like a human infant. This is because laughter evolved millions of years ago in one of our common ancestors, say scientists."

Comments

Hu?

[aepervius]

Just as much proof exists to say that they, at the very least, could have evolved from separate organisms.
Could you pelase show us your proof that chimp/ape/human don't share a common ancestor ?


Shall I even mention the leap of faith required to even consider whether those same 2 animals evolved in the first place?
Ha I see you are a creationist then. I hate to rbeak it to you, but the above article is about science, and for science, as of now with the evidence we have, all animal evolve and those two animal, whatever the animal HAVE evolved.

I badly formulated it

[aepervius]

"Could you pelase show us your proof that chimp/ape/human don't share a common ancestor ?" should read "could you please show us proof that the current theory (and the evidence for it) that human/ape/chimp share a common ancestor is false".

Re:hmmm

[Insanity Defense]

After all these years, creationists are still resorting to the same strawman arguments. I guess changing their tactics over time to be more successful would be hypocritical.

You wouldn't expect them to evolve would you? To do so would in fact be hypocritical of them. You can't expect them to compromise their faith by doing such a thing.

Re:hmmm

[spun]

If a God can exist without having a creator, so can a Universe. Saying God created it answers nothing, predicts nothing of value, and is thus essentially meaningless. By your logic, God could have created the Universe this very second, with light already in transit from distant galaxies, thoughts already half formed in your mind, a half written post on a computer in front of you, memories of writing it snug in your head.

That is no more or less absurd than saying God created the Universe billions of years ago.

Re:hmmm

[spun]

Humans are just part of the natural environment that created both breeds. No difference. Great danes and chihuahuas are separate species. Just like two species on the opposite sides of a ring in ring species are separate. You can see this in birds of the arctic circle. Each type can breed with those next to it, but travel too far around the circle and the species can't breed. For example, A-B-C-D-E-F-G. A can breed with G and B, produce sterile offspring with C and F, and can't breed at all with D. Such collections of ring species exist all over the world, and it's not too far of a stretch to look at great danes and chihuahuas the same way. Because a great dane father would simply kill a chihuahua, the mother is physically unable to bear the children even with artificial insemination.

But all that is moot, because we have far more compelling evidence. We've bred species of fruit flies in the lab that can no longer interbreed with wild fruit flies. Speciation has been observed in the lab and in the wild. The debate about macro evolution is over. It was only ever considered a separate thing by creationists anyhow. Macro and micro evolution are the same thing.