《中英對照讀新聞》No Joke: Animals Laugh, Too不是開玩笑：動物也會笑

◎ 陳怡君

Life can be funny, and not just for humans.

生活可以充滿逗趣，而且不僅是對人類而言。

Studies by various groups suggest monkeys, dogs and even rats love a good laugh. People, meanwhile, have been laughing since before they could talk.

不同團體所做的研究顯示，猴子、狗兒，甚至老鼠，都喜歡開懷大笑。同時，人類在能夠交談以前，就已經會笑。

“Indeed, neural circuits for laughter exist in very ancient regions of the brain, and ancestral forms of play and laughter existed in other animals eons before we humans came along with our 'ha-ha-has' and verbal repartee,” says Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist at Bowling Green State University.

「的確，笑的神經迴路存在於大腦的非常古老區域，傳承自久遠時代的玩耍和笑聲的形式早在我們人類出現『哈哈哈』和口頭敏捷應答的很久之前，就存在於其他動物身上，」布林格陵州立大學的神經科學家傑克．潘克塞普如此表示。

When chimps play and chase each other, they pant in a manner that is strikingly like human laughter, Panksepp writes in an issue of the journal Science. Dogs have a similar response.

黑猩猩彼此玩耍追逐時，會以和人類笑聲有驚人相像的方式喘息，潘克塞普在期刊「科學」的某一期中如此寫著。狗也有類似的反應。

Dictionary-新聞辭典

good：本字有多種意思，此處為形容詞，意指令人愉快的、令人高興的。例句：Did you have a good time at the party?（你在派對上玩得高興嗎？）

eon：即aeon，名詞，無法計算的漫長時期，永世。例句：He recalled his talk with her eons ago. （他回憶起許久之前和她的談話。）

repartee：名詞，敏捷的應答（能力）。例句：I enjoy listening to their repartee. （我喜歡聽他們的機敏應答。）

pant：可當動、名詞，意指喘氣；若作為動詞，還有渴望的意思。例句：She was panting for a chance to speak. （她渴望得到說話的機會。）

strikingly：副詞，驚人地、顯著地、引人注目地。例句：His youth was a saga with a happy ending -- a wedding to a strikingly beautiful woman. （他的青春時期是一個有快樂結局的歷程－和一位令人驚艷的美女結婚。）