Animals laugh

Kurt Vonnegut released Galapagos in 1985.  The book predicts that a million years in the future, humans have evolved into seal like creatures with dramatically smaller brains.  Many traits associated with modern humans as we know them today have vanished in the seal-like people.  Warfare is a thing of the past.  So is industry, architecture, art and culture.  One thing does remain the same, however.  Farts are still funny.

It now seems like such a move may bring the species full circle.  Challenging the specist notion that laughing is a uniquely human trait, researchers have begun to suggest that the "laughing" found in other types of primates points to a common ancestor.

"Our evolutionary tree based on these acoustic recordings alone showed that humans were closest to chimps and bonobos, but furthest from orang-utans, with gorillas somewhere intermediate. And that is what you see in the well-established evolutionary tree of great apes," said Davila Ross. "What this shows is strong evidence to suggest that laughing comes from a common primate ancestor."

Check out the full story if you don't believe me.  Personally, I think it's kind of cool to think that the monkeys at the zoo could be laughing at me just as much as I'm laughing at them.  By the by, did you know that chimps can ride segways?