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A website that tells you about stuff you probably didn't know about laughter

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13 Things You Probably Don't Know About Laughing

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Laughter is a funny thing: Why did we evolve to giggle and cackle and guffaw, and what purpose does it serve besides, well, making the world a happier place? Here, some more surprising facts about cracking up.

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-What makes certain people laugh?
-Why do people laugh at funny videos and pictures?
-What is the scientific reason people laugh?

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This websites tells you why we laugh

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Laughter is part of the universal human vocabulary. All members of the human species understand it. Unlike English or French or Swahili, we don't have to learn to speak it. We're born with the capacity to laugh.

One of the remarkable things about laughter is that it occurs unconsciously. You don't decide to do it. While we can consciously inhibit it, we don't consciously produce laughter. That's why it's very hard to laugh on command or to fake laughter. (Don't take my word for it: Ask a friend to laugh on the spot.)

Laughter provides powerful, uncensored insights into our unconscious. It simply bubbles up from within us in certain situations.

Very little is known about the specific brain mechanisms responsible for laughter. But we do know that laughter is triggered by many sensations and thoughts, and that it activates many parts of the body.

When we laugh, we alter our facial expressions and make sounds. During exuberant laughter, the muscles of the arms, legs and trunk are involved. Laughter also requires modification in our pattern of breathing.

We also know that laughter is a message that we send to other people. We know this because we rarely laugh when we are alone (we laugh to ourselves even less than we talk to ourselves).

Laughter is social and contagious. We laugh at the sound of laughter itself. That's why the Tickle Me Elmo doll is such a success - it makes us laugh and smile.

The first laughter appears at about 3.5 to 4 months of age, long before we're able to speak. Laughter, like crying, is a way for a preverbal infant to interact with the mother and other caregivers.

Contrary to folk wisdom, most laughter is not about humor; it is about relationships between people. To find out when and why people laugh, I and several undergraduate research assistants went to local malls and city sidewalks and recorded what happened just before people laughed. Over a 10-year period, we studied over 2,000 cases of naturally occurring laughter.

We found that most laughter does not follow jokes. People laugh after a variety of statements such as "Hey John, where ya been?" "Here comes Mary," "How did you do on the test?" and "Do you have a rubber band?". These certainly aren't jokes.

We don't decide to laugh at these moments. Our brain makes the decision for us. These curious "ha ha ha's" are bits of social glue that bond relationships.

Curiously, laughter seldom interrupts the sentence structure of speech. It punctuates speech. We only laugh during pauses when we would cough or breathe.

An evolutionary perspective
We believe laughter evolved from the panting behavior of our ancient primate ancestors. Today, if we tickle chimps or gorillas, they don't laugh "ha ha ha" but exhibit a panting sound. That's the sound of ape laughter. And it's the root of human laughter.

Apes laugh in conditions in which human laughter is produced, like tickle, rough and tumble play, and chasing games. Other animals produce vocalizations during play, but they are so different that it's difficult to equate them with laughter. Rats, for example, produce high-pitch vocalizations during play and when tickled. But it's very different in sound from human laughter.

When we laugh, we're often communicating playful intent. So laughter has a bonding function within individuals in a group. It's often positive, but it can be negative too. There's a difference between "laughing with" and "laughing at." People who laugh at others may be trying to force them to conform or casting them out of the group.

No one has actually counted how much people of different ages laugh, but young children probably laugh the most. At ages 5 and 6, we tend to see the most exuberant laughs. Adults laugh less than children, probably because they play less. And laughter is associated with play.

We have learned a lot about when and why we laugh, much of it counter-intuitive. Work now underway will tell us more about the brain mechanisms of laughter, how laughter has evolved and why we're so susceptible to tickling - one of the most enigmatic of human behaviors.
Robert Provine, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is completing a book entitled "Laughter" that is scheduled to be published this fall by Little, Brown and Company. Do you have "Cosmic Questions" about the universe's great mysteries - such as the prospects for interstellar travel? Or are you wondering about "Common Curiosities," such as the reasons we snore and what we can do about it? In either case, e-mail your suggestions to mysteries@msnbc.com, or discuss your questions and answers on the Mysteries of the Universe Bulletin Board. Your topic could become the subject of a future installment of "Mysteries of the Universe."

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Laughter is part of the universal human vocabulary. All members of the human species understand it. Unlike English or French or Swahili, we don't have to learn to speak it. We're born with the capacity to laugh. One of the remarkable things about laughter is that it occurs unconsciously.

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Try Not To Laugh Watching Funny Animals Compilation 2017 | Funny Animals Fails Vines 2017

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The funniest and most humorous cat videos ever! - Funny cat compilation

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This website tells you about the things that make you laugh

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What's the mechanism behind the brain's 'decision' about what is funny and what is not? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
Answer by Fabian van den Berg, Neuropsychologist, on Quora:
Humor is another one of those things/aspects that we really don't stop and think about how it even works. We take so much for granted. We're terrible to our brains. Anyway, humor, let's see what we know.

Let's establish our terms first. Humor in general, is it even a thing? Is it a human thing? is it different for everyone? We, humans, are definitely not the only species to express pleasure with laughter. We know that other animals laugh too (which is the only objective measure we have of this, not like we can ask them if it was funny).

Aside from that famous hyena laugh, (which isn't a sign of happiness) we've made plenty of animals giggle. Not just close ape cousins, but also dogs and rats. Oh how I wish I was the scientist in charge of rat-tickling, that's a resume to be proud of. Anyway, what this tells us is that laughter is likely an early evolutionary mechanism. In dogs and rats it conveys play-behavior, so we assume there is some social information being conveyed.

From an evolutionary standpoint you might think in the line of conveying that something isn't threatening or dangerous, but it could also have to do with social relationships (since we laugh more with others around). Humans are unique in the way we use humor. Dogs, apes and rats can't tell jokes. Humans have more complex behavior that enables our humor to be a bit more advanced. Our social behavior is very complicated, so it's not strange that our humor evolved with it. Laughing isn't a human specific thing, but jokes/humor is. Humor requires more complex functions that other animals don't seem to posses (which explains why my dogs were never amused by my teasing).

Humor/laughing is actually a thing, so what do we see in the brain? When scanning people, we notice that it has to do with expectations and the violation of scripts. We find things funny that don't fit with what we think should happen. Our brains are pretty good at predicting what might happen. We like routines, anything that deviates will pop out. The detection of whether something is funny or not seems to happen in the left Inferior Frontal and Posterior Temporal lobe. Your amygdala then releases some dopamine and spindle neurons transmit the happy feeling to other areas.

Different types of jokes result in different types of activation of course (puns for instance make the language centers go wild). Regardless of the joke-type, the brain responds to humor. Humor is when we expect one thing and then something else happens, when our scripts are broken in a non-threatening way. This also corresponds with a lot of jokes and physical humor. You expect one thing, and then the twist turns it around completely.

The brain doesn't necessarily 'decide' if something is funny. It's more a question of 'did it see it coming?' If expectations are violated, it can elicit joy and happiness. The entire process: the hows and whys aren't known yet, but I believe the general consensus is that it relays social information to others. It signals that nothing bad is going on, everything is fine, so join in and don't worry.
This question originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. More questions:

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What's the mechanism behind the brain's 'decision' about what is funny and what is not? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.