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 ...

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By Rachel Feltman and Sarah Kaplan, The Washington Post Dear Science: Why do we only laugh when someone else tickles us? Why can’t I tickle myself? Your ...

Maybe there is a tickle monster living underground or on a planet called Ticklelandia. And the people come to Earth and while we’re sleeping, they get in our mouths and live in our bodies. That’s why ...

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 ...

Tickling is a very strange sensation because it doesn't depend on your will. That's right, you don't decide whether or not to laugh; your body simply reacts. Your brain doesn't even have a chance to ...

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, ...

New research has given credence to the idea that laughter evolved in a common ancestor of the great apes and humans. Researchers tickled 22 young apes and three humans and acoustically analysed the ...

Laughter is one of the joys of life and it helps us connect, which may be why we play peekaboo and tickle games with babies. Whether animals share our sense of joy has been a hot topic in research.