Living World Images: Animal Humour or Humorous Animals?

Before the animals, here's a nice Autumnal image taken in the Chiltern Hills on November 16th at the end of longest 'Indian summer' I can remember. As well as the usual insomniac butterflies and out of season spring flowers, the most anachronistic behaviour I came across this autumn was on a warm day in the New Forest on November 9th, when I saw a mated pair of Darter dragonflies ovipositing in a shallow pool. Someone tell them it's six weeks to Christmas! The leaves have usually just about fallen by this time but there's still plenty of green on these beeches. We're having our first winter gales one week later though; the temperature has dropped about twelve degrees and snow is on the way, so I reckon the picture would be very different now.

Burnham Beeches, Chilterns.

So how about animal humour? We love to identify with and relate emotionally to animals and there are whole industries from Disney to greetings cards to cuddly toys that make big money from our eagerness to ascribe human values to them.

Ask any pet owner whether their dog/budgie/hamster/iguana/stick insect has a sense of humour and they'll say 'of course they do' and probably relate a few whacky antics performed by Spot/Joey/Amanda/Errol/Rod to back it up. But are they misguided? Many scientists would claim that humans are prone to anthropomorphise animal behaviour and attribute human qualities to non human animals so their answer would be 'no', people observe the instinctive behaviour of animals and interpret it according to their wide ranging human emotions.

The OED defines humour as 'the condition of being amusing or comic' so you could say lots of animals, because they amuse us and make us smile or laugh, are humorous. Sense of humour is more difficult though; defined as 'the ability to perceive or express humour or take a joke' it suggests that the being, human or animal, making us smile or laugh needs to know that they're doing it or having it done to them.

Let's have a look at some amusing animals to lighten up the discussion.

Ewe with stile

Now here's sheep No 317 climbing a Derbyshire stile. You often see spring lambs doing this sort of thing but not their parents, so why was she up there? Perhaps it was fun in an ovine sort of way. It certainly made us laugh.

Nanny on drums

And this Greek goat is probably just balanced on an old oil drum because goats love to climb and that makes them feel good and that makes us smile. We smile at the 'capricious' behaviour but we also smile at the self satisfaction of the goat , because we imagine doing that ourselves and the feeling it would bring. And does the goat sense that we empathise with its pleasure? Humorous, yes but sense of humour?

Scientists, even behavioural scientists, would say that when animals do something that we find humorous, they probably get rewarded in various ways that reinforce that pattern of behaviour. This can be anything from 'who's a clever boy then' (mmm, not bad) to petting (better) to food treats (now you're talking!). Of course circuses, dolphinariums and zoos capitalise on conditioning animals like this to train them to make us laugh in exchange for money.

The orang-utan below in Kuala Lumpur Bird Park in Malaysia is one such example. He's only very young and that makes him naturally playful and easier to train. You may say he'd be better off in his native jungle in Malaysian Borneo* and I would agree but the relationship between him and his trainer is hilarious and he seems to enjoy the whole performance.

It seems too as though he knows he's making the audience laugh even though his prime motive may be to get some treats in the form of positive social interaction with his trainer and hopefully some food, which will make him feel good. Isn't that what we do too when we use humour? We make people smile so that they feel good about us so that we feel good ourselves and maybe get something positive in return, like a kind word, maybe free drink or even an interesting night out.

A look at some birds:

Ducks are always good for laughs and their calls often sound like laughter, which reinforces the humorous image.

Shoveler duck female bathing.

Mallard on a fence.

Geese and swans don't raise as many smiles as ducks; but then again ............

Canada Goose head on.

Bewick's Swan preening, (please don't attempt this in public).

And penguins are guaranteed to raise a smile. They are the only bird to walk upright on two legs so are easy to empathise with.

African Penguin

When we come down the evolutionary scale, we still find humorous characters, like this cricket. Of course, the 'smile' on his face is just formed by the hinge between his mandibles and the top of his head but we're conditioned to see some kind of jovial Jiminy cricket Walt Disney character, an image that's hard to shift even when we know we're looking at a humourless insect.

Field cricket

This Common Darter dragonfly's face has the same effect, looking like some kind of puckish fairy but the smile is a 'crocodiles smile' and could well be the last thing the dragonfly's insect prey sees.

Common Darter

Finally, more mildly humorous animals. They speak for themselves but one of the most powerful ways we anthropomorphise animals is to put words into their mouths, so please supply your own captions.