If you think laughter and comedy are reserved strictly for humans, you’d be wrong. A study in the late 1990s showed that ...

Rats have what appears to be a “laugh centre” in their midbrain that is activated when the animals are tickled or when they engage in play behaviours. Researchers first discovered that rats could ...

If you tickle a rat's belly, it squeals with laughter. However, we are unable to perceive this laughter as its frequency, around 50 kHz, exceeds the range of human hearing. Neuroscientist Jaak ...

Now that we know octopi like to play with cameras, it’s time to investigate other forms of animal play. Did you know that rats laugh when you tickle them? This ...

To study play behaviors in animals, scientists must be able to authentically simulate play-conducive environments in the laboratory. Animals like rats are less inclined to play if they are anxious or ...

When the cat’s away, to paraphrase an old cliché, the rats will play. Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp, working at Washington State University, has devoted a decade to watching that play. And from those ...

A technique that is increasingly used worldwide to improve the welfare of rats in research is rat “tickling”—whereby humans make light, brisk, and vigorous movements with their fingertips on a rat’s ...

WASHINGTON — So a scientist walks into a shopping mall to watch people laugh. There's no punchline. Laughter is a serious scientific subject, one that researchers are still trying to figure out.