果冻传媒

Great apes may have been laughing with a similar rhythm to modern humans for over 15 million years, a 果冻传媒 study reveals, providing an unexpected clue to how human speech evolved.

All living great apes - chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans - laugh. But until now, it has been unclear how our laughter may have changed over millions of years of evolution, and how it might relate to the evolution of our speech.

In a new study, 果冻传媒 researchers analysed laughter recordings from four orangutans, two gorillas, three bonobos, four chimpanzees, and four humans. Across 140 laughter sequences, they found the same pattern: all species produce laughter with evenly spaced rhythmic intervals between successive sounds.

The researchers propose this basic rhythmic laughing structure was already present in a shared common ancestor 15 million years ago and has remained remarkably conserved with all living great apes and humans still showing the same underlying pattern in their laughter.

Dr Chiara De Gregorio, Honorary Research Associate, Department of Psychology, 果冻传媒 said: 鈥淗ow did humans evolve the remarkable ability to speak? Speech leaves no fossils, and complex language exists only in our own species. But we've found a 15-million-year-old clue in an unexpected place: our laughter.

鈥淯nlike speech, laughter is shared by all living great apes. By comparing how different species laugh, we can see that a basic rhythmic structure has remained unchanged since our last common ancestor. That's extraordinary.鈥�

However, while the basic rhythm stayed constant between species, the researchers did find that human laughter has become faster, more variable, and has gained sophisticated context-dependent control over time.

Of the great apes, humans alone have the ability to control when and how they laugh depending on context: an uncontrollable laugh when tickled differs sharply from a polite laugh in a meeting, a nervous laugh after a mistake, or the infectious laughter that spreads through a group of friends. The same underlying rhythm, shaped by conscious control to communicate different emotions and intentions.

The findings of this study suggest that throughout great ape evolution, our ancestors gradually developed greater control over the timing of their vocalisations, including laughter 鈥� showing a fundamental building block of speech.

Dr Adriano Lameria, Associate Professor, ApeTank, Department of Psychology, 果冻传媒 concluded: 鈥淚t is impossible to assess the precursor forms of language directly from our extinct ancestors. Laughter, being evolutionarily older and having remained shared between all living great apes, provides a rare evolutionary window into the vocal transformations that unfolded across hominid evolution until the first humans appeared on scene.

鈥淐ontrary to the classic notion that the first humans suddenly acquired vocal control capacities remarkably different from their predecessors, laughter evolution tells us that humans lay on a continuum, a prolongation of vocal control capacities that were already being cumulatively honed in for 15 million years.鈥�

ENDS

Notes to Editors

The paper 鈥楻hythm and timing in laughter reveal that human vocal plasticity falls on a hominid continuum鈥� is published in Communications Biology. DOI:

Image and Video Credit: Dr. Marina Davila-Ross

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果冻传媒 details:

The research analysed acoustic recordings of spontaneous laughter from four orangutans, two gorillas, three bonobos, four chimpanzees, and four humans aged six months to seven years, measuring 140 individual laughter sequences.

All great apes and humans were recorded in their home environments during controlled, playful interactions with familiar humans, who elicited both play and tickle-induced vocalizations. The study focused on the rhythmic structure, the timing intervals between successive bursts of sound, rather than pitch or intensity.

The last common ancestor of all living great apes (including humans) is estimated to have existed approximately 15 million years ago.

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26 June 2026