Humans and Great Apes Giggle With a Similar Rhythm and Timing, Suggesting We Have Shared Our Style of Laughter for 15 Million Years

Understanding how laughter evolved can reveal the secrets of human speech

Sara Hashemi | Daily Correspondent

June 29, 2026 2:30 p.m.

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Laughter is universal among humans. Researchers have found that our closest relatives, apes, also laugh, and do it with a similar rhythm and timing as people.

The study, published on June 25 in the journal Communications Biology, sheds light on the evolution of laughter and speech.

The team compared the recorded laughter of four human children and 13 captive young apes across different species—two gorillas, four orangutans, four chimpanzees and three bonobos. Overall, 140 recordings were taken during regular play and tickling.

The analysis revealed that while the basic rhythm of laughter has stayed constant since about 15 million years ago—when the last common ancestor between humans and apes lived—human laughter is quicker and more variable. Species closer to humans, chimps and bonobos, also laughed faster than more distant relatives, gorillas and orangutans.

“In a way, we are very similar to other great apes because we’ve been laughing in a similar way for 15 million years,” explains Chiara De Gregorio, a study co-author and zoologist at the University of Warwick, to Adithi Ramakrishnan at the Associated Press.

What most separates human laughter from that of other apes is our ability to control it depending on context. “I think we can say we are the masters of laughter,” De Gregorio tells the New York Times’ Emily Anthes. “We can have a small, polite laugh in front of the Queen of England, and then we are in the pub with our friends, and we laugh so much in a different way. We can even laugh in a way that communicates to the other person that we actually didn’t find the joke they said funny.”

The study can help illuminate how speech evolved in humans: It’s possible that developing a more flexible laugh allowed humans to eventually develop language, since sophisticated vocal control is an important building block for speech. “Laughter, in this view, is not merely a social signal but an accessible model for understanding the deep evolutionary roots of human vocal communication,” the authors write in the study.

Kristin Sabbi, a primatologist at Harvard University who wasn’t involved in the study, tells Gennaro Tomma at National Geographic that laughter “feels like a very solid link between humans and nonhuman primates.”

While this research has limitations, particularly the small sample size, future studies could expand its scope. Sabbi adds to National Geographic that it would be interesting to investigate how the flexibility of laughter changes over an ape’s lifetime, since the individuals in the study were young. Further work could also help researchers understand how humans put their own stamp on laughter.

“Laughter is such an important part of our way of communication,” De Gregorio says to the New York Times. “It’s able to communicate way more than, ‘I’m playing and I’m having fun.’”

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Sara Hashemi is a science writer and fact-checker currently based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Sierra, The Body, Maisonneuve magazine and more.