Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By Rachel Feltman and Sarah Kaplan, The Washington Post Dear Science: Why do we only laugh when someone else tickles us? Why can’t I tickle myself? Your ...

What is it about a tickle that makes us giggle? And why can’t we tickle ourselves? Greg Foot explains all. When you're touched, the nerve endings under your top layer of skin, or epidermis, send ...

Tickling is a very strange sensation because it doesn't depend on your will. That's right, you don't decide whether or not to laugh; your body simply reacts. Your brain doesn't even have a chance to ...

If you think laughter and comedy are reserved strictly for humans, you’d be wrong. A study in the late 1990s showed that creatures like rats emit ultrasonic vocalizations while playing with or ...

Play is one of the least understood types of behavior. By tickling rats in the lab, scientists were able to identify a part of the brain critical for play and laughter. If you hang around on the right ...

If you tickle a rat's belly, it squeals with laughter. However, we are unable to perceive this laughter as its frequency, around 50 kHz, exceeds the range of human hearing. Neuroscientist Jaak ...

If you tickle a young chimp, gorilla or orang-utan, it will hoot, holler and pant in a way that would strongly remind you of human laughter. The sounds are very different. Chimp laughter, for example, ...