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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.
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.
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?
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