Spring Break
Smile from ear to floppy ear : Is your dog laughing at you?
Cate Marquis
Issue date: 4/4/05 Section: Opinions
In honor of the recent April Fools Day, let us look at a humorous subject: the laughing dog.
Many a dog owner has sworn that their dog is smiling at them or laughing along with them. Certainly, the opened-mouthed expression on the face of a panting, playing dog looks like a smile. But zoologists warn us about anthropomorphizing animals, reading human meanings into their actions or expressions. Often people will see what they want to see, regardless of the real meaning of the animals' actions.
Yet intriguingly there is a new report in the journal Science that speculates that "play sounds" in animals, like panting sounds in dogs and chimps that resemble human laughs, do indeed represent an animal equivalent of laughter. Chimps display the laughter-like panting noises when they chase or tickle each other. Anyone who has roughhoused with a dog has heard their "play pants" as they chase and tumble.
The author of the report is Dr. Jaak Panksepp, of Bowling Green State University in Ohio, who studies the neuroanatomical and neurochemical mechanisms of emotional behaviors in the emerging field of affective neuroscience. Dr. Panksepp's work seeks to understand a variety of emotional responses including social bonding and social play, and how these affective responses are organized in the brain. In a recent issue of the journal Science, Dr. Panksepp cited the long observed panting "play noises" of chimpanzees, which sound like human laughter, and panting sounds of dogs at play.
In a 1998 study, Panksepp and another researcher reported that rats produced a high-pitched chirping sound during play, and that the sounds were associated with a pleasurable response to tickling or play. When rats are tickled in a playful way, they become socially bonded to humans and even would seek out tickles. The rats' chirps do not sound like human laughter and are even beyond our hearing range, yet are associated with play.
Neural circuits in the brain that release the neurotransmitter dopamine light up in the human brain when people laugh. A similar response is thought to occur in rat brains during the chirping response.
Many a dog owner has sworn that their dog is smiling at them or laughing along with them. Certainly, the opened-mouthed expression on the face of a panting, playing dog looks like a smile. But zoologists warn us about anthropomorphizing animals, reading human meanings into their actions or expressions. Often people will see what they want to see, regardless of the real meaning of the animals' actions.
Yet intriguingly there is a new report in the journal Science that speculates that "play sounds" in animals, like panting sounds in dogs and chimps that resemble human laughs, do indeed represent an animal equivalent of laughter. Chimps display the laughter-like panting noises when they chase or tickle each other. Anyone who has roughhoused with a dog has heard their "play pants" as they chase and tumble.
The author of the report is Dr. Jaak Panksepp, of Bowling Green State University in Ohio, who studies the neuroanatomical and neurochemical mechanisms of emotional behaviors in the emerging field of affective neuroscience. Dr. Panksepp's work seeks to understand a variety of emotional responses including social bonding and social play, and how these affective responses are organized in the brain. In a recent issue of the journal Science, Dr. Panksepp cited the long observed panting "play noises" of chimpanzees, which sound like human laughter, and panting sounds of dogs at play.
In a 1998 study, Panksepp and another researcher reported that rats produced a high-pitched chirping sound during play, and that the sounds were associated with a pleasurable response to tickling or play. When rats are tickled in a playful way, they become socially bonded to humans and even would seek out tickles. The rats' chirps do not sound like human laughter and are even beyond our hearing range, yet are associated with play.
Neural circuits in the brain that release the neurotransmitter dopamine light up in the human brain when people laugh. A similar response is thought to occur in rat brains during the chirping response.
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