Why do we laugh...? By Katherine Lightwood

Why do we laugh...?

By Katherine Lightwood

Have you ever wondered what is 'Humour' and if something is funny, why do we laugh...?

What is the real purpose of laughing and why do we laugh when we are tickled...??

Well, people study this ...Weird it may sound and they are called 'GELOTOLOGISTS' ... Yeah, that's true and trust me I am not making that up. You can literally search this on the internet. And we don't have the answers yet but we do know that we are 30 times more likely to laugh if there are other people around. And there are also studies that babies laugh before they learn any language. And babies that are born blind and deaf will laugh.

There are thousands of languages, many dialects, but yet we all laugh in much the same way. Our brains are constantly looking for a laugh in much the same way. Our brains are constantly looking for patterns, ways of understanding the world and predicting what's next and it's because of our evolutionary advantage. And so when something begins in a way that we expect and then all of a sudden changes and surprises or delights us. We often react with laughter because we had just learned something. We've learned a new logical order.

And these theory suggests that those things are funny because there's an incongruency between what we expected and what happened. If it's a dog dressed like a human or a clever use of wordplay. In other words, comedy is about learning. But once you've learned a new logical order of a joke then it ceases to be funny. Which is why jokes are funny only the first time but not every other time after that.

But what is tickling...? Even though most of us don't like being tickled but when we are tickled we often smile and laugh. And the possible explanation is it helps teach children at a young age some proper defensive behaviors.

Now, physically laughing involves the epiglottis- a little flap thing that protects the trachea whenever we swallow so that food or water doesn't go out into our lungs. This is where laugh happens when epiglottis constricts the larynx and thus we get the LOL. And for your information epiglottis actually, have taste buds on it. Which means that anatomically speaking COMEDY TRUELY IS A MATTER OF TASTE.

So, that was my thought of the day. To see more posts like this make sure to visit our main page. And Do not forget to visit our institute's page to know more about graphic design, 3D, animation courses and other awesome stuff. Till then good day to you.

Katherine Lightwood