BBC:

The giggling sounds of a hyena contain important information about the animal’s status, say scientists.

In the first study to decipher the hyena’s so-called “laugh”, they have shown that the pitch of the giggle reveals a hyena’s age.

What is more, variations in the frequency of notes used when a hyena makes a noise convey information about the animal’s social rank.

What a disappointment is to learn that the laughter is meaningful and not some demonic expression of the true absurdity of existence, of being in a world that is the way it is—full of misery, pain, and throats that heartily swallow the little joy that is to be had. At the end of the universe, one expects to see some laughing teeth, gums, tongue, and a throat to nothingness.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

9 replies on “Hyenas Laugh Is not Really Laughter”

  2. Good Morning Charles,
    Hmm? That finding doesn’t mean much to me. I have actually seen and heard hyenas in Cameroon, Africa. They do have quite an unusual sound. Whatever, I am glad that I am a human animal that can laugh.

    “Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.”

    -Friedrich Nietzsche

  3. Cry more, Charles. Animal sounds aren’t just cool background ambiance for your visions of savagery and wilderness. They’re there because they’re meaningful. Sorry if that scares you and shakes your view of the world, but it’s true. Get over it. And keep reading more animal behavior books. Recent ones, preferably.

  5. The more I read of Mudede, the more I become convinced that he was that one kid in creative writing class in high school that everybody thought was a huge fucking joke.

  6. @5 You weren’t convinced already?

    Chaz…you are so fucking retarded. Everybody has known for years that the only reason we think a hyena’s laugh is a laugh is because we’re giving it anthropomorphic qualities as opposed to it being the only animal who has a human sense of humor.

    Just as some people tend to give your writing the intellipomorphic qualities of a scholar instead of the childlike scrawls on a bathroom wall it really is.

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