Tell a silly joke, sneeze at a rather inopportune moment, remember something that embarrassed a good friend, forget which suit is trump in the card game you’re playing…there are a thousand and one ...

If you laugh until you cry when someone touches a sensitive area on your body, you’re ticklish. Some people are so ticklish they laugh or cringe at the slightest touch or at the anticipation of being ...

Rats have what appears to be a “laugh centre” in their midbrain that is activated when the animals are tickled or when they engage in play behaviours. Researchers first discovered that rats could ...

From bonobos and rats to tickling robots, research is finally cracking the secrets of why we’re ticklish, and what that reveals about our brains ...

People vary in how sensitive they are to tickling. Some people are only ticklish sometimes, while others are not ticklish at all. Tickling can be a fun game, a temporary annoyance, or a deeply ...

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, ...