Great Apes Are Pranksters Too

Like humans, great apes are ticklish, laugh and play.

And now it is confirmed that they also gossip.

The study of interactions within groups of bonobos, chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas shows that some, especially the youngest ones, pull the hair, hit the back to run away instantly or stand in front of an adult with their faces almost touching

For the authors of this new work, the fact that hominid species, including humans, share the ability to mock, indicates that 13 million years ago, when their lineages diverged, this dimension of humor already existed, which would indicate that mocking It had and has an enormous evolutionary role.

Little humans already hesitate to their parents from the age of seven or eight months, when they hide objects from them, jump on them or have fun disobeying them.

Although it is not as elaborate as telling a joke or playing games, these behaviors are essential in social interaction.

This “touching noses,” as primatologist Josep Call calls it, has several characteristics that differentiate it from play: it is unidirectional, it seeks to provoke the victim, it is usually surprising, it is repeated until the other responds and, almost always, without stop looking at him.

A large group of primatologists recorded dozens of hours of young people of the four species of great apes from different zoos and research centers.

According to their results, published in the scientific journal

Proceedings of the Royal Society B

, they recorded about 500 non-violent social interactions and, of them, about 140 were classified as jokes, mockery or ridicule.

The first result of the study is that adults do not play jokes, they suffer them.

On only two occasions, the prankster and the sufferer were adults.

The rest of the interactions were initiated by the young people in each group.

The work sought to record the little ones, which could hide interactions between the older ones.

By species, the most hesitant seem to be chimpanzees (with 84 events), followed by orangutans and bonobos and, further away, gorillas (with only 7 events).

The authors of the work remember that comparisons between species cannot be made due to the small sample size (34 individuals, with 5 young).

Although most of the provocations were directed at the elderly, the victims were rarely the mothers.

This observation goes in the opposite direction to the observed centrality of the maternal-filial relationship in these groups.

Among bonobos, for example, the mother helps the son in his relationships with the females.

And orangutan babies depend entirely on what their mothers teach them.

“The orangutan

Aisha

and the bonoba

Belle

never made fun of their mothers,” details researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior, Development and Evolution of Cognition (Germany) and first author of the study, Isabelle Laumer.

For their part, the two baby chimpanzees in the sample tested their parents' patience 14% of the time, one time, and 8% of the time, the other.

“The exception was young gorilla

Denny

, who directed her teasing behavior toward her mother or father most of the time (71% and 14% respectively),” she adds.

But, again, the sample limits generalizations.

They plan to expand the study to a larger number of animals.

Of the 18 teasing or joking behaviors that the researchers identified, the most common were pushing, hitting, or getting in the way and annoying.

They also highlighted pulling hair and taking things or food, even if it was not to eat it.

In almost all of these cases, they do so without taking their eyes off the victim.

As happens among humans, looking at the other while playing a joke, especially if it is surprising or heavy, avoids misinterpretations.

In fact, only 5% of the responses were considered violent.

And there was a very human pattern too: the repetition of the action if the one who endured it did not respond.

Almost all the young people insisted on bothering until they got the target's attention.

For the authors, this pattern reinforces their idea that there is an intention behind these behaviors.

In the images (see video above), the young people provoke and move away, but they always end up looking at the person provoked.

Many of these behaviors seemed to be used to prompt a response, or at least to attract attention.

“It was common for provocateurs to repeatedly shake or swing a body part or object in the middle of the target's field of vision, hit or poke him, interrupt his movements, pull his hair, or engage in other behaviors that were extremely difficult to ignore,” says Erica Cartmill, from the department of anthropology at the University of California Los Angeles and senior author of the research.

Among the response of those provoked, patience predominates.

27% ignored the pranksters.

In another 24%, the matter was settled with a slap or other mild aggression and 17% simply walked away.

The authors of the work highlight that the existence of these jokes and playful provocations in the four species of great apes and in humans, even before they learn to speak, suggests that the common ancestor of all of them, which diverged about 13 million ago for years, he already had these behaviors.

“To unravel the evolution of humor in our species, we plan to also study teasing and play behavior in others.

We now know that the four great apes play playful pranks.

The next step would be to investigate whether other species of primates and other animals with large brains also show this behavior,” says Laumer.

The primatologist at the University of Saint Andrews (United Kingdom) Josep Call, not related to this study, has been studying the complexity of both the mind and social relationships in primates for years, including some that could be similar to friendship between humans.

“

Teasing

is something that is seen very often among young chimpanzees and sometimes among adults.

It is part of the game behavior, typically in a relatively friendly way, although sometimes things get out of hand and what starts as a game turns into an aggressive episode,” he says in an email.

The researchers recalled that Jane Goodall and other field primatologists had already mentioned similar behaviors in chimpanzees many years ago.

Chilean scientist Isabel Behncke has also investigated laughter in her sister species, the bonobos.

But this new study is the first to systematically analyze playful teasing in all four great apes.

Regarding the function of jokes, Call is more cautious.

He believes it is necessary to carry out larger studies specially designed to study these behaviors, but he provides an idea: "One possibility is that it is a way for young people to see how far they can go with other individuals."

In humans, this would fit with practical jokes.

In fact, this type of behavior flirts with play and violence at the same time.

“Later on, these behaviors, especially in males, become more serious and aggressive and adolescent males use them to intimidate other individuals and climb positions in the social hierarchy,” Call concludes.

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