Do animals have senses of humor?

[MildredHubble]

Humour is a strange thing, the more you try to rationalize it, the less you are persuaded it exists.

If you define it as being amused, then I'm quite sure animals experience amusement. But if you define it as irony, I think that's just too much of an abstract human concept for animals to understand.

As far as my own sense of humour goes, I often have struggled to pick up on others saying something intended to be ironic. So I certainly won't hold that against my cat

Maybe my cat's sense of humour is limited to having me go on fools errands. I think @Rodafina is probably correct that humour emerges from feeling safe and comfortable.

My cat must trust that I will still care about him, even if he is trying to wind me up. So I think it's pretty wonderful that he will joke around with me and not feel worried that I won't take care of him.

I mean, if you think about it, my cat's behaviour isn't that different from a toddler playfully hiding from their parents when they are calling or looking for them. I'd imagine we've all seen kids doing things like that. It's not sophisticated humour, but we understand why it's fun for them.

Another thing my cat likes to do is run into a room as I'm about to close the door behind me. When I go into the room to pick him up, he will run back out as I approach him. Then when I try to leave, he will wait until I'm back outside the room and he will run back in. So we do the "HookieKokie" (how do you even spell that?! Lol) a few times.

But after that game he will often come and apologetically rub his head against my leg as if to say "I didn't want to be mean to you".

 

[Aneka]

If they do, what do they think is funny?

They know when people make fun of them.
My cat had been grooming his fur and my mum imitated the noises he made with his tongue, the cat immediately stopped grooming and looked my mum in the face with an offended stare. She did it again- same reaction.
That wasn't cat's type of humour.

His idea of fun is to play hide and seek, he will tap me with his paw, run away and wait until I find him. He also likes to steal objects like pens and sleep with them. He did this more often when he was younger.

I don't think they have a sense of humour in the way humans do, but they do know how to have fun

 

[kriss72]

They know when people make fun of them.
My cat had been grooming his fur and my mum imitated the noises he made with his tongue, the cat immediately stopped grooming and looked my mum in the face with an offended stare. She did it again- same reaction.
That wasn't cat's type of humour.

His idea of fun is to play hide and seek, he will tap me with his paw, run away and wait until I find him. He also likes to steal objects like pens and sleep with them. He did this more often when he was younger.

I don't think they have a sense of humour in the way humans do, but they do know how to have fun

That is true, they don't like to be made fun with, I had a cat the loved to play fetch with my hairbands, then I had some "friends" over pretending to shoot them and laughing when she felt for it, she didn't find it funny and stopped wanting to play.

 

[marc_101]

Joking aside (hehe), the main issues are defining "sense of humor" to be able to study it and then making inferences about its existence in animals (other than we humans) that do not communicate. My pets for sure appear to have a sense of humor given the pleasure they get from mischievousness but there could be other motives for that. I think that the problem reduces to trying to establish if animals have consciousness and inner lives capable of reflection.

Humor is complicated.