Good news for carrot top: jokes don t have to be funny to make people laugh. And good news for folks with tickets to a Carrot Top show: vigorously laughing even when there's nothing particularly amusing may be good for your health. Of all the absurdly silly things human beings do, laughing ought to be among the hardest to explain. If early homo sapiens were told they were going to be loaded with behavioral software that would cause them to convulse, pant and emit loud whooping noises when amused or touched in particular ways, they would probably have held out for Human 2.0. But the fact is, laughing makes a lot of sense. What else can so enjoyably exercise the heart and boost the mood? What else can serve so well as both a social signal and a conversational lubricant? What else can bond parents to children, siblings to one another and teach powerful lessons about staying alive in a tooth-and-claw world? Laughter may seem like little more than evolution's whoopee cushion, but if scientists studying it are right, we owe it an awful lot of thanks for some surprisingly serious things.
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