Laughter – a spontaneous, uncontrolled behaviour everyone experiences – is a basic feature of our lives. However, although laughing is a commonplace activity, we would find it difficult to explain why we laugh. This book’s authors, a neuroscientist and an ethologist, take us into the world of laughter and explore its origins. We will discover that, contrary to common sense, laughter is not an exclusively human behaviour. We will understand what happens in our brains when we laugh. We will see how laughter is a complex behaviour and that there are many types of laughter with different meanings. Studied by philosophers, linguists, psychologists and ethologists, laughter is examined here from the novel perspective of evolutionary theory, focusing on the origins and functions of an engaging, fascinating and enjoyable activity.

Fausto Caruana is a member of the Italian National Research Council’s Neuroscience Institute and teaches Neuroscience and Language at the University of Parma.

Elisabetta Palagi teaches Ethology at the University of Pisa. In 2020 she was awarded the Animal Behaviour Society Fellowship Award for her studies on animal behaviour.