A human, cow and bird walk into a bar

Animals laugh.

I bumbled across that fact only this week in a short, breezy article online. It shouldn’t have surprised, but it did.

Animals laugh!

The article, at Open Culture, referenced a longer study by two professors at the University of California-Los Angeles. The study was published in April in the journal Bioacoustics.

Its conclusion: At least 65 animals – mostly mammals, a few birds – have been found to emit “play vocalizations.” In a word, laughter.

Among those animals: Many apes and monkeys, cows, kangaroos, rats, gerbils, elephants, badgers, the Louisiana mink, the European polecat, dolphins, parakeets, magpies. And domestic dogs and cats.

Rats laugh when tickled, emitting a sound too high for human hearing. They like it!

Many other animals probably laugh too. We won’t know until – unless – someone bothers to look. Opossums, perhaps. Rattlesnakes, crickets, snails?

I find laughter among animals comforting. It’s yet another way we humans are more like other animals. More alike means less unique. And less unique counsels that we act with greater humility and exert less dominion.

I’m OK with that. Chuckle, chortle, giggle.