Do Aliens Have a Sense of Humour?

They probably have a face, eyes, and olfactory sensors, but what about a smirk?

UFO, George Stock, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Life needs time, space, and a bit of pressure. These items are rife in our galaxy, let alone the universe. Following this reasoning, we could easily assume there is life somewhere in our vast abyss of opportunity.

Intelligent life would be rarer yet, but lightyears from the impossible. For it is extremely beneficial for procreation.

What about humour?

Humour is something we take for granted, something we’ve lived with since birth. The first time we saw our parents laughing at us, we wanted more.

Humour first arose as a coping mechanism for chaos, irony, or the macabre.

We can view humour as an aspect of emotional dumping or elation, an agreeable theory that many contemporary researchers echo.

And this theory nestles nicely with reality, especially for those of us who use our grounded imagination to explore hypotheticals.

Let’s say you’re being chased by a bear, and your adrenaline is through the roof, and said bear falls off a cliff. What do you do?

Well, you let out elation. A release, a moment when the body says, “Okay, we’re probably safe now.”

And I might add that I like bears, which would make a bear falling off a cliff sad, yet I have never been chased by a bear with an agenda. And hypothetically, this falling bear has an agenda, or did.

Now here’s where it gets tricky…

How did humans develop humour?

The dump of endorphins from neanderthal to Norm Macdonald was not a straight road. Nor was it friendly.

Humour not only arose through strife, but its perspective on dread was sought after. We found more solace in calm, composed faces than in past deeds. Back then, cooler heads prevailed simply because we were more willing to listen to them over a basket case.

The Human Brain is not a work of art. It is not perfect, and it is not exceptional at handling its endorphins.

It is a hodgepodge computer that has managed to have sex with its kin despite the world trying to kill it.

Hell, the neanderthals had more RAM than us, but we had sex more, so we won.

However, one thing we will never know is how neanderthals laughed. We know they arted–as the kids would say. We know they used fire and complex tools.

But their anonymous DNA disappears before the real funny stuff begins. For instance, dogs.

Dogs make us smile and laugh. They make us happy. And they were a technology, one that helped us flourish into the Neolithic.

Most people who aren’t terrified of dogs get a lot of laughs out of the little guys. And humour is a key component in cooperating with the adorable drooling mouth-breathers.

So what else is Humour, and why does it make us laugh?

Humour provides an emotional pathway for patience, understanding, and even perspective. It’s also an emotional lubricant that helps new concepts permeate our egos.

Humour can promote modesty and forgiveness. Which is apt since we barely understand ourselves, so in a social environment, we can’t be expected to understand everyone else. Therefore, humour can soften our edges and give us a bond separate from logical understanding.

Plato and gang seem to think it has a lot to do with social structures, pattern recognition, and displays of dominance. And yet, that’s tertiary to our conversation.

We want to know if it can happen again.

Humour: As certain as life in the stars

Now, many of us know that humans got to where we are today through social constructs. Society is a technology, and banding together is a weapon.

Whether for defence or aggression, we capitalised on numbers, coercion and organisation. It is why we’re still here, and the Thals are but a fraction of our genetic makeup.

There just wasn’t enough of the fellas. And our early bands of brigands took it to them. They were stronger and smarter than us, and yet, they are but an echo in our loins. An artefact of evolution.

Neanderthals needed more resources, which made it harder for them to reproduce.

We just beat them in numbers. A mindless tactic, albeit a great one at that, before the advent of artillery and machine guns.

Even mindless tactics prosper with coordination.

Can we say for certain that humour helps all social constructs? No, it can sometimes hurt.

Our society is full of people so removed that they no longer care. Humour could be seen as a form of disconnect, and that’s how it was seen in our early civilised dealings.

If you were being silly, you weren’t taking life, church, or your job seriously enough.

Why would extraterrestrials develop humour?

Well, they wouldn’t. But how are comedians naturally selected?

Let’s imagine a crisis is happening. Your cave is assailed by angry short chonky humanoids with large craniums. Meanwhile, your elder or leader is freaking out and rubbing his faeces on the wall.

You’d be less inclined to follow this over the person who calmly speared three of the chonky invaders and held one of the few entrances to your cave. Did humour help this man fight?

Did it stave off a deluge of emotions? Emotions that would have rendered him a flighted lizard in a corner? Relying solely on the amygdala?

Perhaps.

And yet it’s not just humour that staves off flight and helps us to fight and survive. In this scenario, many other social traits are leaned on. Including satisfaction and the reward system.

These social traits are tools, tools to keep us churning. Keep us fighting, keep us alive.

So, if we were to imagine extraterrestrials on a similar planet in a Goldilocks zone– there are at least ten thousand of these we can perceive from our dusty rock–then we can assume numbers will be as beneficial as reproduction.

Procreation and angry mobs are mutually beneficial. Albeit, only for the angry mob.

We can also assume that many proto-intelligent xenos would have to overcome a similar species. After all, all stupid things crave control, which promotes the elimination of things they can’t control or understand. Hence, Neanderthals saw us as a threat, and we saw them the same way.

We can also safely infer that some intelligent Xenos would have highly developed emotions in order to deal with their own hodgepodge brains and nervous systems.

Perhaps even, there are species that have genetically altered their ad hoc design to something that harmonises with their current civilisation. In fact, many of us are attempting this today.

So do Aliens Laugh?

So if the Xenos had to develop through natural selection, had to fight an ancestor, and develop emotions, then it would more than likely have some form of elation or emotional release. A check and balance for fight or flight.

This form of release would help the species stay calm and composed under stressful situations, and this trait would be selected over alternatives.

After all, a rash human can get far on their own, reproduce, and destroy. But they are vulnerable to numbers, tribalism, or gangs.

And gangs naturally form when creatures are existentially threatened. Therefore, social and cooperative traits will often prevail in myriad circumstances.

So laughter could be our proprietary way of release.

It’s possible that nothing else laughs the way we do.

And yet, humour and release? Probably as common as using numbers to predict things we can’t imagine.

I’d be willing to bet humour is just as natural as social constructs. They’re not mutually exclusive, but they’re complementary. Which could multiply the occurrence.

So are Xenos laughing at us right now? Maybe. I would.