Don’t try this at home, but tickling a gorilla, orangutan, bonobo or chimp can inspire bursts of grunting sounds. Yes, that’s laughter, says Marina Davila Ross of the University of Portsmouth in ...

March 31, 2005 — -- We may know what kinds of things make us laugh -- slapstick, a clever pun, an inside joke with an old friend, an April Fools' gag -- but just what are those strange sounds we ...

One morning 10 years ago, psychologist Jaak Panksepp walked into his lab and made an unusual proposition to a research assistant: “Come tickle some rats with me!” Panksepp wasn’t just trying to ...

A children’s author, the host of a television show and an NPR commentator are the guests at the premiere of Season 2 of “Pretending to Be on Television with Glen Tickle” Sunday, Jan. 8 at the ...

There’s not a PR firm in the world that could spin the reputation of the rat. They’re aggressive, they’re destructive and they’re everywhere. The global rat population is estimated to be at least 7 ...

Apes often make weird sounds when they're tickled, and some researchers now say these pants and hoots truly are related to human laughter. That's the conclusion of a new study in the journal Current ...

Thought it was just humans that are ticklish? Think again - scientists are studying how animals respond to being tickled in a bid to shed light on how laughter evolved. Tickling a gorilla is not for ...

If you tickle a young chimp, gorilla or orang-utan, it will hoot, holler and pant in a way that would strongly remind you of human laughter. The sounds are very different. Chimp laughter, for example, ...

Does someone tickling you make you break out in laughter? For a lot of people it does. However, researchers have now found that the way we laugh from being tickled is 'uniquely different' from other ...

Dear Science: Why do we only laugh when someone else tickles us? Why can’t I tickle myself? Your question touches on one of the great mysteries of the human mind. No joke. Our inability to tickle ...