Dr. Miquel Llorente wrote for The Conversation about a new comparative study on great ape laughter, and discussed it on Onda Cero's La Rosa de los Vientos. The question: what can the rhythm of a chimpanzee's laugh tell us about how speech evolved?
Past August 2026, The Conversation published an analysis by Dr. Miquel Llorente (Comparative Minds Research Group) of a study that has drawn wide media attention this summer. Researchers from the Universities of Warwick and Portsmouth analysed 140 laughter sequences from orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees and human children, recorded during tickling and social play. The study was published in Communications Biology. They found that laughter is isochronous in all five species: each burst follows the previous one at regular intervals, with a steady beat. The authors conclude that the last common ancestor of all great apes, around 15 million years ago, probably already laughed this way.
In the article, Llorente puts the finding in a broader context. Many animals have play signals that mean "this is a game, not a fight", which ethologists call metacommunication. Rats produce ultrasonic chirps when tickled, dogs have a "play pant", and dolphins emit fast click trains while chasing each other. Rhythm on its own is not unique to great apes either, since lemurs and gibbons also produce regular, beat-based calls. The key result is a different one. Humans are the only species that change the tempo of their laughter depending on context. We laugh differently at a joke than when we are tickled, while other apes keep the same beat. That flexible control of breath and voice is exactly what speech requires. "Sound doesn't fossilise," Llorente explains, "so comparing living species is the only way to hear how our ancestors learned to control their voices long before the first word."
Llorente also pointed out the study's limits. The authors present laughter and language as an almost direct line, as if one gave birth to the other. Vocal control is one important piece of the puzzle, but only one. From its origins, human communication has also relied on the hands, posture and gaze. The sample is small, as is common in primatology, and body size and developmental stage can affect vocal rhythm independently of evolutionary history. For these reasons, he sees the work less as a final map of how the voice evolved and more as a strong roadmap for future research.
He developed these ideas further in an interview on the Nueva Era section of La Rosa de los Vientos (Onda Cero).
🔗 Read and listen:
📝 Original study:
De Gregorio, C., Davila-Ross, M., & Lameira, A. R. (2026). Rhythm and timing in laughter reveal that human vocal plasticity falls on a hominid continuum. Communications Biology, 9, 824. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-10499-z
📝 Related scientific publication from our group:
Gázquez, J. M. M., Castelain, T., & Llorente, M. (2026). Language as an evolutionary pressure of human handedness. Acta Psychologica, 264, 106489. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2026.106489