Great Ape Laughter Reveals a Hidden Origin of Human Speech
mrpg writes:
Great apes may have been laughing with a similar rhythm to modern humans for over 15 million years:
Great apes may have been laughing with a similar rhythm to modern humans for over 15 million years, a University of Warwick study reveals, providing an unexpected clue to how human speech evolved.
All living great apes - chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans - laugh. But until now, it has been unclear how our laughter may have changed over millions of years of evolution, and how it might relate to the evolution of our speech.
In a new Communications Biology study, Warwick researchers analysed laughter recordings from four orangutans, two gorillas, three bonobos, four chimpanzees, and four humans. Across 140 laughter sequences, they found the same pattern: all species produce laughter with evenly spaced rhythmic intervals between successive sounds.
The researchers propose this basic rhythmic laughing structure was already present in a shared common ancestor 15 million years ago and has remained remarkably conserved with all living great apes and humans still showing the same underlying pattern in their laughter.
[...] However, while the basic rhythm stayed constant between species, the researchers did find that human laughter has become faster, more variable, and has gained sophisticated context-dependent control over time.
Of the great apes, humans alone have the ability to control when and how they laugh depending on context: an uncontrollable laugh when tickled differs sharply from a polite laugh in a meeting, a nervous laugh after a mistake, or the infectious laughter that spreads through a group of friends. The same underlying rhythm, shaped by conscious control to communicate different emotions and intentions.
The findings of this study suggest that throughout great ape evolution, our ancestors gradually developed greater control over the timing of their vocalisations, including laughter - showing a fundamental building block of speech.
Submitted from ScienceDaily
Journal Reference: De Gregorio, C., Davila-Ross, M. & Lameira, A.R. Rhythm and timing in laughter reveal that human vocal plasticity falls on a hominid continuum. Commun Biol 9, 824 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-10499-z
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