Monkey Business

If this were a week ago I would be sure it was just another dumbass April Fools Day internet joke, but it appears to be legit. Courtesy of the fine folks over at Popular Science, I present to you my next job: ape tickler.

We know that apes are ticklish. But does ape and human laughter mean the same thing? Marina Davila-Ross, a neuroscientist at the University of Portsmouth in England, sought an answer in what is perhaps science’s most enjoyable research project: tickling human and ape babies to compare their laughter. After tickling the babies of several colleagues and recording their giggles, Davila-Ross traveled the world, recording the laughter of baby chimps, bonobos, gorillas and even a siamang, a gibbon found in Southeast Asia. In most cases, she held the mic as the apes’ handlers tickled the little ones. (“Apes are like us—many won’t be tickled by a stranger,” she explains.) But after three months in an orangutan rehab center in Borneo, she got to do her own tickling on half a dozen furry orange babies. Her research suggests that tickle-induced laughter developed in a common ancestor 10 to 16 million years ago. “It was fun,” Davila-Ross admits. “It’s play behavior, and everybody—apes and humans—enjoys that.”

"It’s play behavior, and everybody—apes and humans—enjoys that.” Ain't that the truth. Right turn Clyde.