Laughter
is an instinctive, contagious, stereotyped, unconsciously controlled, social
play vocalization that is unusual in solitary settings. Laughter punctuates
speech and is not typically humor related, speakers often laugh more often than
their audience, and male speakers are the best laugh getters. Laughter evolved
from the labored breathing of physical play, with the characteristic
“pant-pant” laugh of chimpanzees and derivative “ha-ha” of humans signaling
(“ritualizing”) its rowdy origin. Laughter reveals that breath control is why
humans can speak and chimpanzees cannot. The evolution of bipedality in human
ancestors freed the thorax of its support role in quadrupedal locomotion, a
critical step in uncoupling breathing from running, providing humans with the
flexible breath control necessary for speech and our characteristic laugh.
Tickle, an ancient laughter stimulus, is a means of communication between
preverbal infants and mothers, and between friends, family, and lovers. Because
you cannot tickle yourself, tickle involves a neurological self/nonself
discrimination, providing the most primitive social scenario.
Tickling is often fun for the
tickler (the person doing the tickling) and can easily be fun for the ticklee
too (the person being tickled). It revolves around touch, which is another
reason we feel better after we're tickled. Tickling can be a great (and
possibly regular) bonding experience between friends, lovers, family members
etc.
