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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."
They tickled three human babies for this experiment.
Hrrmmpff.
Mod parent up, +1 Funny.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
16 million and 1 years ago? Talk about a tough crowd... and no booze or blow to help take the edge off.
OK, I'll bite. Nobody other than you is saying that humans *must* have evolved from a common ancestor with other apes simply because of a single shared trait. It's a very well-documented scientific fact that humans and other apes share a common ancestor. Modern genetics, biology, study of fossil records, etc. all repeatedly confirm this theory. And it's pretty reasonable to suggest that a trait present in all species of a family was present in their shared common ancestor.
Science isn't a tool of "the liberal agenda." Evolve yourself a brain and read a fucking biology textbook.
And that rats also giggled when tickled.
A reference from 1998 might be uselful for those interested.
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.
Evolution is quite real. Humanity has played with it for a long time. But we must drop the assumption that behavior observed now has been there 16 million years ago. Why do we assume chimpanzees stopped evolving, again?
Might be a case of convergent evolution.
From what i have understood, social animals behave more or less the same; there is a evolutionary advantage in some behaviours. That should then also why we can communicate better with dogs rather than polar bears, despite that they both are about equally "far" from us.
Rats are social animals and, possibly, their giggling is one cue to a mutual social behavious - perhaps social animals giggle. How then do dogs giggle? I do not know what do expect, but perhaps they giggle, but we just have not identified it as such yet.
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Shall I even mention the leap of faith required to even consider whether those same 2 animals evolved in the first place?
If you have:
It's impossible NOT to have evolution.
We observe these 3 things every day, in every new baby plant and animal.
These mutations are not selective to a specific sub-set of traits. They go across the board effecting every trait of an organism. Nature is constantly changing every aspect of every organism right in front of our eyes, with every new birth. If we do this for millions of years it's impossible NOT to have an incredibly different organism at the end.
The misconception comes from the idea that an ape gave birth to a human. This is simply not the case. The change was very gradual, changing trait upon trait over time. Today's apes are VERY different from the apes of the past.
The only reason we separate and classify into Homo erectus, sapians, neanderthalensis, etc. is to make sense of it all. We give different words to groups of organisms that have different traits. They're basically the same living thing with slightly different traits.
Where we draw the line and call things different species, races, etc? Well it's very difficult, and so we're constantly refining what names we give to groups with different traits. But they're just NAMES. The traits change all the time.
This gradual change in traits that we observe happening RIGHT NOW is what many people call evolution. There's LOTS of evidence (bones & fossils) to say that this has always happened.
When observing all of this right in front of our eyes, it actually takes a leap of faith to say things don't evolve. Even the last 2 Catholic Popes (heads of a very non-liberal organization) have understood and agreed with it. Once you see it, you have to say, "I don't believe my eyes." And THAT is the true leap of faith.
A: So what do you do for a living?
B: I tickle orangutan babies and then write about it.
From the article:
If you tickle an orangutan, for example, it makes a series of loud panting hoots; it would be easy to mistake these sounds for pain or distress, rather than joy.
If you tickled me, especially if you when I was a small child, I would make sounds that were easy to mistake for joy when they were really sounds of pain or distress. I HATED being tickled. Hated it. My Mom would tickle me until I couldn't breathe when I was about 3-4, and I tried desperately to get away, but I couldn't stop laughing or uncurl myself from a ball. It took her a few years to get that I really, honestly despised it.
My point is, how do we know the apes are laughing? How do we know they're enjoying it and not just incapable of fighting it off like I was when I was little?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
In other news, scientists have named these 16 million old laughter as "True Laughter". In comparison, the human laughter is named "Hi Laughter", believed to be between 16384 and 262144 years old.
I thought the first sign of humor was the now famous phrase, "is that a banana or are you happy to see me"
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
If one mammal can laugh, why not another? We share plenty of other traits.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If a great ape doesn't like something, your first clue will be that you die. They might look like gentle giants of nature but any great ape is many times stronger then a human being. Try this, you swing yourself up on a branch with one arm holding a baby or tractor tire with the other.
The saying "where does a 400lbs gorilla sit: anywhere it wants to" isn't for nothing.
An orangutan incapable of fighting of a research assistant :p
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I didn't realize we were able to hear someone or something from 16 million years ago laugh to *know* that action is that old.
You incorrectly assume that we have to experience a fact through our senses to be able to know that fact to be true.
The problem isn't really a single trait, it the lack of a complete set of traits. Much of what is known about the past is interpreted in order to fit into a prescribed story. You have relationships between form and function that go completely ignored too. Similarities in DNA can easily be attributed to similarities in appearance where the DNA is a certain way because of Two arms and two legs or the way the arms and legs bend rather then because of a common ancestor. There was a recent discussion about dog breeds and how they would be labeled different species altogether is they were extinct and and we dug up the bones. You could theoretically, under the current definition being applied in evolutionary biology as speciation, have two border collies, one in the UK and one in America, separated by the Atlantic ocean and they would be considered separate species.
Now this isn't to say that there isn't a common ancestral connections, it's to say that there is no empirical evidence proving it and too much weight is being put on the evidence claiming it is true. In fact, some people, even here on slashdot, will claim that evolution as it is currently stated is a proven fact that is indisputable (even to science) despite never witnessing speciation in the real world without bending the definition of species. They won't even allow for Evolution to be broken into distinct groups for challenges as if it harms their holy word or something. Take this laughter situation, rats have been witnessed to emit ultrasonic squeals when tickled as a youth. Dog and cats make the same respective growls and purs when tickled at young ages. To make the same claim that laughter is 16 million years old and that this shows proof of a common ancestor, then rats, cats, dogs, and elephants, most likely belong in the same family with the same ancestors and are practicing something 16 million years old.
On the other hand, if laughter, especially at an early age, it a function of necessity in pack animals (rats, apes, elephants, canine, felines, and humans are all pack animals in that we band together in early years of life and display what could be considered laughter) in which young animals are encouraged by enjoyment and feedback of that enjoyment to stay with their parents/siblings to learn (interpret) instinct and so on to ensure their survival the species, the only connections to ancestors would be survival over a set of environmental circumstances. Laughter could be nothing more then an evolved trait that animals which group together have found keeps them together at critical stages in life. In short, it could be nothing more then a learned behavior with benefits that encouraged those who did it well to live longer and procreate more then those who didn't.
Wow, good argument there. Let's see, lets assume that you don't believe me when I say the was light is green at the intersection exactly 25 years 1 day, 13 minutes and 2 seconds ago, now prove to me it wasn't. You see how that seems ridiculous? The problem isn't finding proof one way or another, it's how convincing that proof is and how much it ties the truth of the situation to reality. Obviously, there are people who aren't convinced that A happened, the answer is to find more proof that A is true as stated not to have someone who doesn't agree run out and find why A is not true. This is especially problematic if A isn't true to begin with and the focus is on A.
This is a problem with psudo scientist like yourself who have turned science into their own religion. First of all, faith or a leap of faith has nothing to do with religion unless the topic is about religion. In the way the GP used the term, the statement was exactly like this "Shall I even mention the _enormous amounts of confidence in the existing evidence's interpretations being absolutely correct_ that is required to even consider whether those same 2 animals evolved from a common ancestor in the first place?"
But you have turned this into a My religion verses their religion. Because of your own ignorance, you have misinterpreted something someone has said and you then instead of constructively address it, which is the scientific way, you then attempt to remove all value of the statement, ignore it, and rail on about science in which you demonstrated an inability to practice.
You may be one of these evangelical atheist, it doesn't matter. But if your going to pretend to use science to counter your arch nemesis, then do so using science and not the some psudo religious replacement in which your holy book is more right then theirs. It adds absolutely nothing to the conversation and marks you as one of the same you are railing against.
You are talking about a concept similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_realizability.
One of the problems is that biological evolution is such a broad term that encompasses many things. Take the bible for instance, there are many historically real facts in there. There are some that is questionable and unverifiable to date. However, saying that a burning bush never spoke to someone names Moses doesn't mean that the Egyptians didn't enslave the jews, or that rome didn't conquer the land currently known as Israel and so on.
With that in mind, there are several aspects of evolution that should have subcategories but don't specifically because people want the appearance of challenges to the validity to appear as challenges to what we know. You pointed to the genetic engineering in which we created breed of the same species. This has been present with cattle probably just as long. However, that is what some attempt to consider as micro evolution (changes within the same species) verses a macro evolution which is changes large enough to create separate species.
You will find that almost no one disagrees with the premise of micro evolution where some disagree with macro evolution. Now they are related to the extent that enough micro evolutionary changes are thought to product a macro evolutionary change. However, this doesn't mean that the line of thinking is true, nor does it mean that if the speciation portion is false, that the micro evolution has to be false too. Therefore the presence of micro evolution only supports macro evolution, it doesn't prove that aspect, and pointing to it for a response to a macro evolution comment only deflects the position behind tricks and smoking mirrors. It doesn't address anything relevant to the conversation other then it is a mechanical part in the theory.
Please don't say birds can fly to the moon because we observe them flying so high and far away that the naked human eye can't spot them under some circumstances. That is the reality of what you did, you pointed to evolution within a species to counter a statement questioning the evidence of if two separate species evolved away from a common ancestor somewhere in time.