Being silly and indulging in humor may sound easy, but our brains need to do a lot of heavy lifting to pull it off. Landing a joke requires recognizing what’s socially acceptable, being spontaneous, predicting how others may react, and playfully violating some social expectations. Until now, research on the complex cognitive abilities that underpin humor has focused primarily on humans, while other species are understudied. In a recent study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, researchers present the first evidence of playful teasing behavior in great apes. Thought to be a precursor to joking, playful teasing involves the teaser performing provocative actions such as poking, hitting or pulling on a body part with playful rather than aggressive intent. Although primatologists in the past, including Jane Goodall, have anecdotally described great apes as being silly and pestering others, this is the first study to systematically describe the behavior in zoo-housed chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans. Two gorillas playing. Image by Max Block. “Playful teasing is interesting because it’s really getting at that teasing component — an individual motivated behavior that is trying to create something akin to joking or being silly,” said primatologist Ammie Kalan from the University of Victoria, Canada, who was not involved in the study. “One of the things that I think is cool with this paper is that they’re purposely trying to set [playful teasing] apart from play.” The researchers studied videos of social interactions between the members of each ape group…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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