Monday, January 28, 2008
Monkeys laugh, too
Facebook friend Phil Shapiro wanted us to know about an article he found about monkey laughs. Yup, turns out that monkeys laugh, too. Or at least they do something that sure seems like laughing.
The article cites Dr Marina Davila Ross, from the University of Portsmouth, who "studied the play behaviour of 25 orang-utans aged between two and 12 at four primate centres around the world." She discovered that: "When one of the orang-utans displayed an open, gaping mouth, its playmate would often display the same expression less than half a second later."
"In humans," she explains, "mimicking behaviour can be voluntary and involuntary. Until our discovery there had been no evidence that animals had similar responses.
"What is clear now is the building blocks of positive emotional contagion and empathy that refer to rapid involuntary facial mimicry in humans evolved prior to humankind."
Ah, rapid involuntary facial mimicry. How fun is that?
from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith
The article cites Dr Marina Davila Ross, from the University of Portsmouth, who "studied the play behaviour of 25 orang-utans aged between two and 12 at four primate centres around the world." She discovered that: "When one of the orang-utans displayed an open, gaping mouth, its playmate would often display the same expression less than half a second later.""In humans," she explains, "mimicking behaviour can be voluntary and involuntary. Until our discovery there had been no evidence that animals had similar responses.
"What is clear now is the building blocks of positive emotional contagion and empathy that refer to rapid involuntary facial mimicry in humans evolved prior to humankind."
Ah, rapid involuntary facial mimicry. How fun is that?
from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith
Labels: theory
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