Orangutan's Laughter is Infectious to Other Orangutans

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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@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.
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"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?
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