Why we laugh at animals (and they probably laugh at us)

Animals in jokes have a better life than we do: they talk, philosophise, wear glasses and nobody ever asks them for homework. So why do we find that so funny?

The answer is simpler than it looks. When an elephant behaves like a person, we laugh because we recognise ourselves in it, yet it is far enough away that nobody gets offended. That is why animal humour works on everyone, from first graders to grandpa, and it comes, roughly, in three flavours: wordplay, pure absurdity and dog philosophy.

When a zebra wears a jersey: wordplay

The oldest trick in comedy is a word that means two things at once. What do you call a bear that trains karate? Grizz Lee, as anyone who grew up on old action films will tell you. In Serbian there is a squirrel that trusts nobody, a neverica: half veverica (squirrel), half nevera (distrust). It is funnier than it sounds once you know both words.

Our favourite is the horse that sees a zebra for the very first time. It looks her over from head to tail and asks politely: “Excuse me, is that your football kit?”

Wordplay only works when you know both sides of the word. That is why teenagers laugh more than small children, and less than grandpa, who heard all of these back in the eighties.

Logic? None: the humour of the absurd

The second kind of humour does not even try to be clever. The brain expects one thing, gets something completely different, and that is where the laugh comes from.

Why does the elephant wear a black coat and dark glasses? Because there are so many jokes about him that he no longer wants to be recognised. What is small, black, sits on a branch and is afraid of nothing? A raven with a machine gun. Neither makes any sense, and that is exactly why they work.

And then there is the pig, the biggest hypocrite of the animal kingdom. It lectures everyone that cleanliness is half of good health, then jumps straight into the mud. Any resemblance to people you know is, of course, purely coincidental.

Dog philosophy

More wisdom has been written about dogs than about most philosophers. Here are the lines we would stick on the fridge:

• Dogs teach us one of life's most important lessons: never trust the postman.
• From a dog you can learn to listen, to be loyal and to turn around three times before you lie down.
• Groucho Marx noted that outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend, and inside of a dog it is too dark to read anyway.
• You can tell a dog the silliest thing in the world and it will look at you as if you had revealed the secret of the universe.
• If you want the best spot on the sofa, you will have to move the dog first.
• Dogs are like crisps: you can never have just one.
• A dog is probably the only relative you get to choose.
• No home is fully furnished without dog hair on everything.

Who is the boss here?

We all believe we are the masters of our dogs. Now imagine aliens watching Earth from space: one creature walks ahead proudly, and the other follows behind with a little bag, picking up after it. Which one would they say is in charge?

The dog, for its part, considers us the greatest hunters on the planet. Every single day we come back from the shop with bags full of meat, and it has no idea we simply paid for it at the till.

You can trust a dog to guard your whole house, but never your sandwich. A well trained dog, to be fair, will not even try to take your lunch. It will just sit next to you and look so sad that the bite gets stuck in your throat.

And if your owner tells you to put on a jumper, the advice from the dog world is simple: tell them to put on a tail first.

Conclusion

Animals are not funny because they are silly, but because they are a little too much like us. Maybe that is the whole point: the more people we meet, the more we love our pets. If you want to know what really goes on in a dog's head when it looks at you like that, read more on our blog.

Joke of the issue

One morning a man watches his neighbour talking to her cat, seriously, as if the cat understood every word. What a weirdo, he thinks. He gets home, tells the whole story to his parrot, and the two of them nearly die laughing.