Tickle a baby chimpanzee on its tummy and it will giggle uncontrollably. Rats too, apparently just love being tickled on their tummies, squeaking high-pitched with sheer glee. If you’ve kept a dog you will have been delighted by the way it seems to grin all over its face, when it’s happy, tongue hanging out a mile, breathing shortly. So yes, many animals do get the giggles, but do they have a sense of humour? Many scientists believe they do. Apart from giggling and laughing when tickled, many animals – the ones with the higher IQs – seem to have a sense of mischief and delight in playing pranks on either each other, or those of a different species. Also, doing ‘fun’ things. Thus crows are known to glissade down steep ice-covered rooftops in winter, like children playing on a slide, simply because they enjoy it. Similarly, they love getting carried up on wind currents rising in front of a mountainside and then going into what seems like kamikaze dives before pulling up at the last possible moment. The notorious keas of New Zealand love taking apart cars and with their powerful bills are well tooled up to do so. Young gorillas, chimps, bonobos and orang-utans – will tease each other – and sometimes their venerable elders - by pulling hair, pinching, punching and running away. An orang-utan laughed uproariously when it realized it had become the victim of a magic trick, shown to it by its keeper. Closer home, I’ve watched crows (the most intelligent among birds) deliberately upset the hauteur of a peacock by repeatedly yanking at its magnificent train with every evidence of enjoyment. The peacock was not amused. Another crow once took a lift on a bus, all the way from Pragati Maidan to the Kashmere Gate Inter-state bus station, hugely enjoying the ride; a distance of about 6 km. Of course, it travelled ticketless. Parrots and parakeets are known badmashes and born clowns. Watch them twirl upside down on telephone wires, just for the heck of it. They will whistle up your dogs for no good reason, or order them to come and go, much to the dogs’ utter confusion. Dogs, in turn, will tease you by dropping their ball near your feet then darting in and grabbing it and lunging off just as you bend down to pick it up. Dogs, in fact, have a typical ‘invitation to play’ posture which they use when they want a game, getting down to their ‘elbows’ and whining, tail blurring. So, yes, there’s laughter, mischief-making and pranking going on galore in the animal kingdom. It is the juveniles which indulge in this kind of behaviour more than the adults, and scientists believe it may be to strengthen bonds between group members and also figure out hierarchy – all of which, is very important when you become a serious stick-in-the mud adult. But adults, too, are not averse to playing games – often for vested interests. I’ve watched a big dada rhesus macaque play ridiculously with a two-bit juvenile, who was naturally thrilled to bits (and still a little nervous!), though I wondered how much the mafia boss enjoyed the caper. He was doing it to inveigle favours from the juvenile’s mother, a venerable grande dame – and in rhesus society it is the support and approval of the duchesses that is vital if a dada male is to become boss of the troop. Basically he was doing the ‘kissing the babies’ routine that our politicians do. Of course, there are the more conventional scientists who warn that we are in danger of anthropomorphising this by assuming that (like us) the animals know that they’re being funny and can make us – and each other – laugh. And, they say, most of the evidence being provided for this is anecdotal. So be it. But when a crow deliberately and repeatedly tugs at a peacocks’ train with no tangible reward in sight – you can only conclude that he’s just having the time of his life bugging the big bird and behaving like a rascal. Some have pointed out that having a sense of humour goes beyond merely laughing when being tickled, making mischief and playing pranks. According to the ‘incongruity theory’ humour arises when there’s an inconsistency between what one expects to happen and what actually happens. Like when you crack a joke, or use a terrible pun – you don’t expect the ending, or roll your eyes at the double entendre. Animals can’t do this. But maybe they’re getting there, like the orangutan mentioned earlier that laughed with it and realised it had been taken for a ride. Another, more recent theory proposes that humour arises from the so-called benign violation or something that ‘threatens a person’s well-being, identity, or normative belief-structure but that simultaneously seems okay.’ Tickling can be considered benign, as long as you know who is tickling you (a friend, or relative) but not when a stranger does it. And you can’t laugh when you tickle yourself because there’s no violation here! But yes, animals do laugh when tickled ‘benignly’ and so under this definition can be said to have a sense of humour. As for ourselves, for decades we’ve lived in a killjoy society. Now, what remains of our sense of humour has become critically endangered, preyed upon ruthlessly by that new predator in the ecosystem – ‘upset sentiments’. Stand-up comics should now be put on the Red Data Book of the IUCN! Maybe we should take a cue from the above-mentioned orangutan who was able to laugh on realising it had become the victim of a prank.
