The Rat That Laughed Hour 3

 THE RAT THAT LAUGHED!

We as humans reflect various kinds of emotions every day. Sometimes we laugh and sometimes we cry. When such emotion is present in humans, scientists wondered if other animals could show similar characteristics. During their research they discovered that rats, like humans, can laugh! Author, Jesse Bering, decides to test this himself and experiments by tickling young rats. To his surprise he learns that rats do truly laugh, but unlike humans, they express their emotion in chirps. Although rats 'chirp,' he realized that a human infant's behavior is extremely similar to a rat's. After receiving positive results, Bering continues his research in depth. He wonders if rats can laugh, does this mean that the have a 'sense of humor?'  Is their a a relationship between rat laughter and human laughter?

 Bering's questions are soon answered by  a neuropsychologist, Dr. Martin Meyer, at the Behavioral Brain Research. Dr. Meyer explains that although rats are able to laugh, human laughter is more complex. We have a "higher order" structure which not only triggers laughter but many other emotions as well. Rats are proven to laugh when tickled but what differentiates humans from rats are that humans have the ability to laugh in different situations rather than just being physically forced to laugh. Using this information, scientists did another research. They studied whether humans can detect different types of laughs just by listening to the laughter. 

They hired actors to laugh in four situations, joyful laughter (when you see your friend after a really long time), taunting laughter (laughing at someone after beating them somehow), schadenfreude laughter (laughing at someone when something bad happens to them) , and tickling laughter (when someone is forced to laugh because they are tickled.) After a long testing process, they learned that majority of the people were able to identify what type of laughter is what. When questioned about the laughter that stood out the most, the taunting laughter stood out the most for many. It was one of the only super negative laughs. This article proves that there are animals out there are cable of expressing emotion.Yes indeed they have a sense of humor much like humans, but humans are an incredible and much more complex phenomenon.

Link: http://web.ebscohost.com/scirc/detail?vid=5&sid=83f0f4dd-a4d7-4ee2-bb6b-161b083c83e2%40sessionmgr12&hid=125&bdata=JnNpdGU9c2NpcmMtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=sch&AN=77340852

More Information: 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rats-laugh-but-not-like-human

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/what-happens-when-you-tickle-a-rat-see-for-yourself/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/26/rats-study-animals-laugh-tickled-video_n_1627632.html

NOS Themes:

• Science is a learning process. Over the years scientists have continued to learn more about different animals and rats in this case. Now they have learned how to make rats laugh.
• Science is a constant discovery. Science is truly a mystery, which is why scientists continue to discover. Based on what they learned, scientists were able to discover that rats can show emotion like humans!
•  Science is testable and ongoing. Although scientists discovered a rat has emotions, they continue to test humans to figure out differences in the way we laugh and in the way rats laugh.