Human and great ape laughter shared same rhythm for 15 million years

Human and great ape laughter shared same rhythm for 15 million years

Human speech did not emerge as a sudden evolutionary leap, but rather as a work in progress spanning 15 million years, according to researchers at the University of Warwick. The discovery comes from a study analyzing the rhythmic patterns of laughter across humans and all four other living great ape species: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans.

The research, published Thursday, June 25, 2026, in the journal Communications Biology, suggests that these species produce laughter with the same evenly spaced rhythmic intervals between sounds. Scientists believe this basic rhythmic structure was present in a shared common ancestor and has remained unchanged for millions of years.

To reach these conclusions, researchers examined 140 individual laughter sequences. The data included recordings of 13 captive apes — including gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, and bonobos — who had been tickled. Some of these recordings were decades old. The team compared these to new recordings of four young children, aged six months to seven years, captured during playful tickling interactions in their home environments.

"In a way, we are very similar to other great apes because we’ve been laughing in a similar way for 15 million years,"

Chiara De Gregorio, primatologist at the University of Warwick, via AP

While the underlying beat pattern is consistent across the species, the study found that human laughter has evolved to become faster and more variable. Most notably, humans are the only species studied that developed contextual control over their laughter. This allows people to fake, suppress, or modulate their laughter depending on social circumstances, such as the difference between a full-bodied guffaw with friends and a polite chuckle with colleagues.

Researchers describe this ability to control vocalizations as a fundamental building block of speech. Because sounds do not fossilize, laughter provides a rare evidentiary window into the evolution of vocal control.

"How did humans evolve the remarkable ability to speak? Speech leaves no fossils, and complex language exists only in our own species,"

Chiara De Gregorio, primatologist at the University of Warwick, via Popular Science

The findings challenge the classic view that human vocal control appeared abruptly. Instead, the study argues that humans exist on a hominid continuum, with vocal capacities being cumulatively honed long before the first humans existed.

Other animals also exhibit laughter, but not in the same way as great apes. For example, when researchers tickle rats, they respond with ultrasonic squeaks rather than the rhythmic patterns seen in the great ape lineage.

Adriano Lameira, an associate professor at Warwick’s ApeTank research group and study co-author, concluded that laughter evolution shows humans are a prolongation of capacities that have been developing for 15 million years. De Gregorio further characterized humans as the masters of laughter due to this sophisticated contextual control.

Brittany Florkiewicz, who studies animal communication at Lyon College and was not involved in the research, stated that the findings make sense as giggles evolved to suit different social lives. She suggested further investigation is needed and expressed interest in seeing comparable recordings of other animals with playful facial expressions, such as cats, horses, and dogs, to better understand what is uniquely human.

The University of Warwick indicated that future research could extend this study to include gibbons and other primates that are not categorized as great apes to further map the evolution of vocal control.