Even when they’re dealing with LIVING animals, the evolutionary mindset is never far from scientists’ thinking:
In a study published in Current Biology in 2009, Dr. [Marina] Davila-Ross and colleagues compared the sounds that great apes made when they were tickled with the laughter that tickled humans produced. — Rebecca Morelle, BBC News, “Scientists Tickle Animals to Find Laughter Clues”, December 29, 2011
Of course they did — but does the “common ancestor” requirement of Darwinism explain it?
They found many acoustic similarities, which has led them to believe that laughter in great apes shared the same evolutionary origin as laughter in humans, suggesting a common ancestor that giggled when tickled. — BBC News
Similarity, an old saying cautions us, is not identity. Nevertheless:
Dr. Davila-Ross, who led the study, explains: “Based on the study, we can now say laughter is at least 30 million to 60 million years old.” — BBC News
Where did the good doctor get that “30 million to 60 million years” from? Since she doesn’t say, thin air comes to mind.
Dr. Davila-Ross says that although it may take time to gather data and assess the results, she hopes this study across the animal kingdom could begin to shed light on how laughter evolved.
“A direct comparison across a range of species will give us some interesting insights into the evolution and co-evolution of play vocalisations and positive animal emotion,” she says.
“I think it is important when one reconstructs evolutionary processes – particularly with positive expressions – that it is important to assess different types of animals.
“In this way we can assess in much detail how did these vocalisations emerge and why is it important for that animal to produce them.” — BBC News
The emergence of anything in the unobservable and irreproducible past must necessarily be the subject of speculation — a severe dearth of data, don’t you know.
A writer at ICR is justifiably skeptical of the whole thing:
With [Dr. Davila-Ross’s] range of 30 million years … it’s safe to assume that evolutionists have no idea when laughter evolved.
The BBC reported that tickling a gorilla “sounds a lot like human laughter.” However, evolutionists maintain that people evolved from chimpanzees—not gorillas. Also, macaws, parrots, and other birds can mimic human laughter even more closely than any primate can, but evolutionists don’t suggest that people evolved from parrots.
And recent reports found that pigeons have numerical abilities like those of primates. Researchers observed pigeons employing “abstract numerical rules” that are “indistinguishable from that displayed by monkeys.” Does this mean that primates share the same evolutionary origin as pigeons? — Frank Sherwin, ICR, “Animal Laughter Study Doesn’t Help Evolution”
So let us respectfully lower the curtain on this gang of researchers as they systematically set about tickling the snot out of a bunch of defenseless animals.
