Why Do Dogs Laugh?

by A.P. Smith

Picture a dog walking another dog.  It’s a funny image.  But would dogs find it funny?  What do dogs laugh at?  Other dogs?  Their owners?  Cats?

“Dogs don’t fucking laugh,” you’re thinking.

Ha!  You couldn’t be more wrong.  Dogs laugh.  Dogs laugh at other dogs.  Dogs laugh all the time.  Dogs are cheerful motherfuckers.

As humans, we’re on the outside of some sick inside joke.

Patricia Simonet, cognitive ethnologist and animal behaviorist, has been studying what makes dogs laugh for some years now, ever since she moved on from hamster culture, elephant self-recognition, and chimp reconciliation.

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Simonet says the dog laugh sounds a lot like a dog panting.  It sounds like a human laugh only without the vocal vowel: “If you laughed Hah, hah, hah, then simply remove the ‘A,’ the same amount of forced air is released, and you got a dog laugh.”

Really?  Give a listen: Dog_Laugh.mp3

To me it sounds like my chain-smoking grandfather laughing through his tracheotomy hole.  But Simonet is quite sure of herself, having lurked around parks with parabolic microphones that enabled her to record dog powwows from unobtrusive distances.  Because you know, dogs don’t like to laugh around humans because humans are almost always the butt of the joke:

“My owner is so dumb,” says one dog.

“How dumb is he?” reply the others.

“My owner is so dumb, he—“

“Wait, here comes a human!  Don’t anyone laugh!”

“Oh, it’s just that bitch Patricia again.”

“Hahahahahahahahaha…”
   
And she gets it all on tape.
   
Really though, when Simonet and her research team at the Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service in Washington state played a recording of dogs laughing over a loudspeaker for 15 observational puppies, the puppies calmed down and in some cases searched for the cheerful dogs they were hearing.

And it seems laughter isn’t exclusive to dogs.  Rats laugh too.

Jaak Panksepp of Ohio’s Bowling Green University has recorded rats’ ultrasonic squeaks while he tickled them.  Occupation: rat tickler.  He says maybe Patricia should tickle her dogs and record those sounds to compare with her previous research.

And I don’t know what to think about that.

Even weirder is Marc Bekoff of the University of Colorado who says that when he gets on all fours and approaches dogs while making a “hhuhahhuhahhuh” sound the dogs get very attentive and interested.

And so, what have we learned from these great minds of animal research?

Dogs laugh.  Rats laugh.  But humans, especially those who research this shit, are the most ridiculous animals on earth.

Website

http://www.petalk.org/

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