It’s No Joke—Apes Seem to Find Humor Appealing
By Gina Wynn
Apes seem to enjoy a good prank as much as the rest of us. In the four great ape species: orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas, researchers have observed playful teasing behaviors like hitting and poking, hair pulling, close staring, and movement disruption, according to a 2024 study. They’ve also been seen repeatedly waving or swinging a body part or object in their target’s field of vision.
Although some field primatologists, including Jane Goodall, have described similar ape behaviors, this study—conducted by cognitive biologists and primatologists from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (Germany), Indiana University, and the University of California San Diego—has been the first to systematically research playful teasing. The group’s findings were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B article “Spontaneous playful teasing in four great ape species.”
A Shared History of Humor
Since the researchers have observed the propensity for humor in both great apes and humans, they believe that the cognitive prerequisites for joking most likely originated in the common ancestor from which they evolved 13 million years ago. The ability to joke draws on competencies typically associated with humans, according to the study, including complex cognitive processing, understanding social norms, grasping the theory of mind, anticipating others’ responses, and appreciating the violation of others’ expectations.
However, the findings suggest that apes may possess many of these competencies as well. Teasing shares commonalities with joking, and some see playful teasing as a cognitive precursor to joking, as reported in the Max Planck website article “Do apes have humor?”
Humanlike Habits
In 75 hours of video footage of zoo-housed great apes, the team saw the primates persistently provoking their targets, surprising them, and incorporating elements of play into their activities just as a human prankster would. Since apes don’t possess language ability—which is not a prerequisite for playful teasing—their practical jokes showed similarities to those witnessed in young preverbal humans.
Human infants begin clowning and teasing early in life, as observed by authors of the National Library of Medicine article “Teasing and clowning in infancy.” Starting around four months of age, they tease adults by pulling a parent’s hair and shrieking with delight as they try to break free. By six months, babies knock over a tower of blocks carefully built by a sibling. By nine months, they offer an object and then whip it back as the other person reaches to grab it.
Attracting Attention
In both the infant and ape studies, it seemed that the goal of the playful teasing was to provoke a response or attract attention. Many of the 18 different ape playful teasing behaviors the researchers recorded appeared to achieve these ends.
Even though playful teasing primarily occurred in relaxed contexts, it would not be considered play because it was one-sided and rarely reciprocated. In the great apes, the intent to play involves certain signals and facial expressions, which were not present during the activity observed by the team, according to the Max Planck article.
Perhaps the apes were trying to use playful teasing to initiate play, however. Or they could have been using it to bond with another troop member. It’s difficult to know the purpose of playful teasing and what kind of evolutionary advantage humor could give animals, according to the BBC article “Why some animals have evolved a sense of humour.”
Some think laughter evolved in humans to help us bond. Humor can also serve as an icebreaker, remove social barriers, and strengthen relationships, according to the study’s first author, Isabelle Laumer (UCLA and the Max Planck Institute), as reported by the BBC.
Could it serve the same purposes for apes? Laumer said we’d need to observe more groups of primates to know for sure.
Gina Wynn is a Thermo Fisher Scientific staff writer.
