‘Hey Bill Nye, Is a Sense of Humor Exclusive to Human Beings?’ #TuesdaysWithBill | Big Think

Hello Bill. My name is Peter. I live in Miami and my question has to do with the sense of humor. It seems logical that sense of humor is a sign of higher intelligence mainly because it usually involves more than one person. And so my question is: is there any evidence that any other animal other than man has a sense of humor? Thanks.

Peter in Miami. Greetings. Is a sense of humor inherent? I think so. It seems to me I’ve watched chimpanzees have fun with each other. Just watching them. I think gibbons have fun. I think they do things for fun and I will definitely say this.

There’s some famous pictures of penguins climbing up the ice hill and sliding down on their penguin tummies to go head first into the what you and I would think really cold water but they dig it apparently. And I cannot think of any evolutionary reason for that except that it just looks like they’re having fun. And so to me, fun and a sense of humor are intimately connected.

Now I will say something about evolution and sense of humor. What you want if you’re trying to attract a mate, I think a sense of humor is very important. I think if you’re funny, if you’re engaging, if you have a good smile especially you’re more attractive to the opposite sex. So there’s huge selection pressure to have a sense of humor among humans.

And I guess I should say something funny here. Something funny. Ha, ha. There I said it see. So I think sense of humor is deep within us. And if it starts with penguins. I mean they’re dinosaurs literally in modern cladistics, in modern reckoning. It must go way back.

Just as an observer of the primate condition and of the dinosaur condition, I think sense of humor is deep within us. How would we test for that? If you had a hypothesis like that how would you test to see if you have a sense of humor?

You know where I would start? I don’t know if you’ve ever been around babies. I was a baby myself for a while. There’s nothing that brings greater joy than hide and seek, peek-a-boo. I wonder if primate babies are into peek-a-boo?

And I say all the time the greatest toy yet invented is the jack-in-the-box where you turn the crank and there’s a little music and then the jack-in-the-box jumps out. And you never know when he’s going to do it. And every time it happens it’s so exciting. And at some level, so funny for some reason.

I guess because you’re asking yourself why would Jack get in this box and what did I do to make him jump out? Whatever it is, it’s really funny when you’re of a certain age. So I would test a jack-in-the-box on primates.

I wonder how many papers have been written about such things? It’s an excellent question Peter. Thank you. Carry on in Miami...