Laughter? It really is the best medicine

Funny bone: laughter may be universal among primates

Now that the election is over and the crimson corpuscles continue to soak into the carpet it seems to this compassionate columnist that it’s time to change the subject. To something light and frivolous. Laughter. Leaving aside the well-known comedians called kookaburras (aka Laughing Jackasses), do any of God’s creatures laugh, giggle or guffaw? It seems they do. Whilst unknown among glum Gerard Hendersonians, laughter is seen in other primates. Though their diminishing numbers and habitats give them precious little to laugh about, our evolutionary kin – bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans – emit laugh-like vocalisations during play or when they are tickled. And we share the same ticklish places. Please take my word for it and do not experiment at home.

Research also indicates that dogs laugh. Recordings of what seems to be dog laughter, when replayed in laboratories to labradors and other breeds, promotes playfulness and tail-wagging. Ditto for dolphins – in 2004 Swedish researchers noticed “short bursts of pulses followed by whistles”. It became clear that these sounds – hitherto undetected – were only emitted during play. I am currently training to replicate them at a local aquarium in the hope of communicating with a pod next summer. Sadly, despite being so well equipped in the mouth and teeth department, there is no evidence that sharks have a sense of humour.

The current count of comedians in animal species is 60. Including rats. Rats don’t actually laugh but apparently they “chirrup” when playing. Remember this the next time you hear a chirrup. It may not be a vocal bird but a rollicking rat.

Twenty-odd years ago, in my scholarly introduction to that surprising bestseller (a million copies and counting) The Penguin Book of Australian Jokes, I speculated on the origin of human laughter. It is my belief that it begins with the habit of tossing a hapless baby aloft – and what dad has not observed this ancient tradition? It is also traditional to catch the baby. On the way up the baby inhales deeply in alarm. On being saved from the forces of gravity it emits a grateful grunt. That grunt, that gasp, that oomph of relief, is the first laugh.

While taking nothing away from the hilarity observed among our hairy cousins in their dwindling habitats in Africa or Indonesia, I believe that human laughter is of existential importance to us bipeds. A few years after being launched into the air by our fathers, we are confronted by bad news: the inevitability of death. Enter, stage right, religion. But not everyone buys the fairy stories of faith with its cheerful promise of heaven – or the eternal, infernal flames of the basement.

And what choice do you have? Some respond by going nuts. Others seek oblivion in the bottle or less legal medications. But the more sensible among us choose the only proven antidote to despair – the acknowledged “best medicine”, laughter.

When the alternative is the screaming abdabs (the origin of that unusual name isn’t known; even the illustrious Oxford Dictionary concedes it is lost in the mysterious mists of time), surely a cheerful chuckle is the best option? A vocal counterpart to giving the Grim Reaper the middle finger?

So here we are in a world of inflation, war in Europe, Covid, monkey-pox, extreme weather events, UFO surveillance and, worst of all, the possibility of Trump getting back into the White House. We have a choice of screaming or laughing. I vote for laughter, even if desperate or strained.