When you see or hear something funny, you might giggle a bit or burst out laughing. It turns out that many animals do something similar. In a study published last April, scientists identified 65 creatures that have their own types of laughter.
Chimpanzees make panting noises and chuckling sounds. Bottlenose dolphins whistle and squawk. Meanwhile, rats make high-pitched squeaking noises that humans can hear only with special equipment.
Scientist Sasha Winkler of the University of California, Los Angeles, is one of the authors of the study. She explains that many of these “laughing” sounds are made during playtime. Some animals make happy noises to signal to others that behavior that may seem unfriendly is actually all in good fun. For example, a dog’s friendly bark sounds different from its threatening bark.
According to Winkler, we can learn a lot from studying how animals laugh to communicate.
“It helps us understand the ways that animals are similar to us, which can also help us understand human behavior better,” she says.