THINKS… (DAVID LODGE) AND LAUGHTER AND CRY FROM AN EVOLUTIVE POINT OF VIEW

- It´s a passage from the 1838 notebook. Darwin is thirty. The voyage on the Beagle is two years behind him. He has the idea of evolution firmly by the tail. Hah, no pun intended...He´s convinced taht man is decended from apes, but he hasn´t gone public yet- he knows all too well what an uproar it will cause. He´s been thinking about laughter- that when humans laught they expose their canine teeth, just like baboons. He speculates that our laughter and smiling might be traced back to the way apes communicate the discovery of food to the rest of their tribe- Ralph underlines the quotation with his finger as he reads aloud: “This way of viewing the subject important, laughing modified barking, smilin modified laughing. Barking to tell other animals in associated kinds of good news, discovery of prey- no doubt arising from want of assistance”. The comes the afterthought. He can´t think what crying might be a modification of. “Crying is a puzzler”

- “Sunt lacrimae rerum”, says Helen

- My Latin´s a tad rusty- Ralph says

- “There are tears of things”. Virgil. It´s almost untranslatable, but one knows what he means. Somethin like, “Crying is a puzzler”

- Actually laughter is a puzzler too- says Ralph- Darwin´s explanation doesn´t really cut it

It´s a pity that animals lack A sense of humour, because it would be very useful for them to kill time. All the animals, from the wildest to the most domesticated , waste boring hours and hours which could be spent among laughter and jokes. I don´t know in which sense could crying be useful for animals, because Crying is a puzzler, as Darwin and Virgil said.

I remember in my neighborhood a dog died, the owners of this dog used to say that their dog, Ron, could smile. They buried it next to a wall in which they wrote: “Ron, the dog with an unforgettable smile” . Some creative scoundrel retouched the epitaph, which became :”Ron, the dog with an unforgettable smell”