Orangutan's Laughter is Infectious to Other Orangutans

Posted by Alex in Animal, Science & Tech on January 3, 2008 at 3:37 am


Scientists discovered that orangutan’s laughter is infectious (to other orangutans, that is). And that evolutionarily, this may be a precursor to human emotions:

Orang-utans can also make each other chuckle – in fact, they are now thought to have developed laughter before us.

Our close biological cousins have a sense of empathy and mimicry which is an essential part of laughter, scientists at Portsmouth University discovered.

When one orang-utan displayed an open, gaping mouth – the equivalent of laughter – its playmate displayed the same expression less than half a second later, suggesting the mimicry was an involuntary display, their research showed.

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COMMENT

4 comments to "Orangutan's Laughter is Infectious to Other Orangutans"

  1. MoonCake
    January 3rd, 2008 at 7:03 am

    "Orang-utans can also make each other chuckle – in fact, they are now thought to have developed laughter before us."

    they are NOW thought to have developed laughter before us? didn't they EXIST before us?

  2. Alison
    January 3rd, 2008 at 8:59 am

    and to humans apparently-- as soon as I saw that photo I smiled!

  3. Alex
    January 3rd, 2008 at 2:56 pm

    @MoonCake: I think you can read the sentence to mean like this:

    One thought is that Orangutans exist before human, but humans developed laughter whereas orangutans never did. But this research proved it wrong: orangutans have been laughing before humans evolved.

  4. marieissah
    January 3rd, 2008 at 11:10 pm

    hahaha @ Alison..

    Just proves that we're really cousins..hehe :) )


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