'You're such an ape!' Playful teasing seen in our primate cousins

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-02-14 11:01

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US and German researchers say they have seen spontaneous playful teasing in four species of great apes. The team say they created a coding system that can identify when apes are being playful and teasing, and applied it to videos of apes in zoos. Teasing behaviours included hiding, hitting, poking, tickling, and violating personal space, and the behaviour often appeared to be designed to provoke a response, or at least to attract the target’s attention. The researchers suggest that, as playful teasing can be found in all living great apes, it is likely a prerequisite for how we evolved joking 13 million years ago.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Spontaneous playful teasing in four great ape species
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Preverbal human babies produce playful teasing behavior starting at eight months-of-age. Since language isn’t required for playful teasing, it might be present in other animals. Now scientists from UCLA, MPI-AB, and UCSD (Isabelle Laumer, Sasha Winkler, Federico Rossano, Erica Cartmill) have documented playful teasing in four species of great apes. Ape teasing is provocative, persistent, and includes elements of surprise and play. All species playfully teased, so it is likely that the cognitive prerequisites for joking evolved in the hominoid lineage at least 13 million years ago.

Journal/
conference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Germany

Funder: This project was funded by a TempletonWorld Charity Foundation grant (grant no. TWCF0318) to Erica Cartmill. S.L.W. is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (Grant DGE-2034835).

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