When he wasn’t busy looking at bird beaks or riding giant tortoises, Charles Darwin took time to note that dogs most definitely have a sense of humour.
In The Descent of Man, he described how a dog will drop a stick on the ground close to its owner, only to “…seize it and rush away in triumph” when the owner tries to pick it up. The dog, he said, was enjoying a practical joke.
Many dog owners will recognise this scenario, but is it really the action of a wannabe canine comedian or could it be something else?
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Dogs are descended from wolves, which are highly social animals that live in packs. As a result, dogs are also highly social.
It’s in their nature to interact with and elicit responses from the humans and other animals that form their pack. This might be the play bow that tells you they’re ready for fun, the tail wag that says ‘I’m just so happy,’ or the long, hard stare at the fridge to see if you’d be so kind as to open the door and get them some ham.
Our ancestors began domesticating dogs over 30,000 years ago and, during the last few hundred years of selective breeding, we’ve fine-tuned their behaviour to make them less skittish and more playful.
Dogs are essentially wolf pups that don’t grow up. Compared to their lupine ancestors,
they never quite mature mentally – a characteristic that gives dogs their mischievous streak.
Some breeds are more playful than others. Irish setters and English springer spaniels are said to be among the goofiest, while samoyeds and chihuahuas are, apparently, more serious.
Dogs even produce a breathy, forced vocalisation, called a ‘play pant’ that’s used to initiate play and is emitted exclusively during play. It makes other dogs wag their tails and seems to make them less stressed.
The vocalisation is also called a ‘dog-laugh,’ which seems reasonable given that laughter is mostly something that we do in response to a fun or enjoyable experience.
This doesn’t, however, automatically mean that dogs have a sense of humour or that they deliberately make people laugh.
If they whip away a stick and it makes us look foolish, it could be that they do this not in the name of slapstick, but in the name of play.
Dogs are smart and know that the manoeuvre could lead to a game of chase or more throw and fetch, or both. Dogs are also very good at reading human emotions and have enough social awareness to realise that human laughter is positive.
So, if the stick-stealing prompts a chuckle, then the dog may be more likely to repeat the antic. Although it may seem as though the pooch is being deliberately funny, it could just be that it has learned that this behaviour makes its owner more happy and less stressed.
Inevitably, the only ones who really know if dogs are intentionally trying to make us laugh are the dogs themselves, so until we learn to speak their language and ask them, maybe the joke is on us!
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Joseph Bennett, Manchester) 'Is my dog intentionally trying to make me laugh?'
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