Can Animals Laugh Or Cry?

A pet – a dog or a cat, you know becomes attached to us so much, that, at times we feel that it is “human”. We begin to think that it can express the feelings in terms of human emotions, such as crying and perhaps even laughing.

In actual, it is not so. Crying and laughing are the human ways of expressing emotions. The animals cannot do likewise. We know, the animals can whine and whimper when hurt. Crying involves the production of tears with emotions, and the animals can not do.

This does to establish that the animals do not have the tear fluid in their eyes. This fluid is used to moisten the cornea of the eye. A creature must be emotionally sensitive and a thinking person to cry. The children begin to cry when they learn to feel and think. An infant yell, but he is not crying.

Speaking is substituted with crying. When one is unable to express the feeling, he cries. It is a reflex that happens despite ourselves and that helps us “get out” what we feel.

Laughter is a human phenomenon. Some animals give the impression of laughing but it is not at all like human laughter. The reason being that man always laughs at something, meaning thereby that a certain mental process or emotion is involved. The animals are incapable of having such a mental process or emotion.

When we laugh at a ‘funny’ sight or at a joke, our minds or our emotions make it seem laughable. There are many reasons, why we laugh and there are many kinds of laughter.

We may laugh – a ridiculous (a big, fat man with a small umbrella), or at a comic (a clown) or at a humorous (a joke), and so on. We may even laugh in scorn.

Psychologists also believe that laughter is a social phenomenon. We laugh when we are part of a group that finds something amusing. Animals of course, cannot resort to laughter for any of these reasons, as such.