By Susan Milius
Status among hyenas sounds like a laughing matter.
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Spotted hyenas may not be amused, but they do make noises that to human ears sound like laughter. Biologists refer to this classic hyena laugh, a burst of short he-hes, as a giggle call.
Among captive hyenas housed in pairs, those calls may carry information about which animal dominates, says neuroscientist Frédéric Theunissen of the University of California, Berkeley. A top hyena giggles with a relatively uniform string of “he-he” sounds, Theunissen and his colleagues report March 30 in BMC Ecology. The subordinate giggles too, but with more variable noises.