Roll up, roll up. The most joyful photography show on Earth is here. This year's nominees for the Comedy Wildlife Photo prize are a delightful bunch.¹

Entries include a dandyishAffecting extreme elegance in dress or manner. monkey striking a loucheDisreputable in a rakish or appealing way. pose in the Balian rainforest, a pair of gannets embracing, a turtle smiling at a dragonfly and two Polish greenfinches appearing to have a heated debate.

But this year's deserving winner comes from Australia. It features a kangaroo appearing to shred an air guitar without a care in the world.

Humans often find humour in animals. We particularly enjoy animals exhibiting human-like behaviour. Ancient Greeks learnt morals through AesopAncient Greek writer (c.620 - 564BC) credited with hundreds of fables: short stories telling a moral lesson, often featuring animals.'s Fables, which encourage us to laugh at characters like the arrogant hare² and the foolish frogs.³

AnthropomorphicAnthropomorphism is when humans ascribe human-like traits, for instance personalities and emotions, to non-human things (including animals). animals have remained popular ever since. George OrwellReal name Eric Arthur Blair, a world-renowned 20th-century novelist, most famous for his political novels Animal Farm and 1984. used them to satirise StalinismThe ideologies and policies adopted by Stalin. in Animal Farm. Cartoonists from Walt Disney to the makers of Peppa Pig have put human-like animals on the screen.

In some cases such as Tom and Jerry, using animals allows animators to include scenes of extreme violence that would seem alarming if inflicted on a human.

We laugh at animals all the time. But do animals laugh at themselves? Recent studies have revealed that many animals do appear to have a sense of humour.

Researchers Sasha Winkler and Greg Bryant found 65 species able to laugh, including foxes, dogs, cows, seals, mongooses and parakeetsA small parrot with green plumage., as well as our ape and monkey relatives. Another experiment saw rats laugh after being tickled.

There is even evidence that some animals can tell jokes. Koko the gorilla was taught hundreds of works. When asked to think of something hard, she signed both "rock" and "work."⁴

If animals have a sense of humour, then surely they can experience happiness. Biology supports it. Mammals, writes science journalist Anna Brooks, "have similar emotional processing centres in the brain as humans so... they would experience basic emotions like fear, anger, grief and joy."

We have found that horses snort when they are happy, Komodo dragons enjoy tugs of war and cockatoos can head-bang to Elvis.

The relatively limited intelligence of animals might make them happier than us. Their needs and thoughts are simpler. They do not need to think about wearing the right clothes or completing homework on time. Their horizons are smaller too. They do not appear to spend time worrying about climate change or nuclear annihilationComplete destruction..

On the other hand, animals might not be able to reach peak happiness. The philosopher John Stuart Mill believed in higher pleasures and lower pleasures.⁵ Only humans can access the first category, which brings greater, more meaningful and long-lasting satisfaction.

Perhaps none of us are happy. Psychologist B.F. Skinner even argued that feelings do not exist at all. Emotions are "fictional causes to which we commonly attribute behaviour." What appears to be emotions is just our mind and body reacting to things, whether in humans or other animals.

Yes: Greek philosopher Epictetus wrote: "There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will." Animals can do this. Most humans cannot.

No: We have become used to seeing animals as furry, scaly and feathered semi-humans. In reality, we are just projecting our own thoughts and emotions onto creatures whose minds are alien to us.

Or... It depends. Just as some people are happier than others, the happiness of an animal depends on its relative intelligence and the life it leads. A wild boar might be happy. A captive pig might not.