Did You Ever Wonder Whether Rats Laugh?

Gary Stix

June 22, 2012 at 8:00 AM

Jaak Panksepp of Washington State University woke up one morning and told his students: “let’s go tickle some rats.” Panksepp wondered whether the rat chirps his laboratory had been studying were actually a form of animal laughter. Panksepp recounts what he found in this video and in an account of his work by Jesse Bering in a chapter from Bering’s new book Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? . . . And Other Reflections on Being Human, published this year by Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book chapter appeared in the July issue of Scientific American.

Source: Washington State University

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