Let’s be honest. There is something special about elephants. Whether it’s the incredible floppy ears, cute trunk, or gentle giant nature, everyone loves those gray behemoths.

Did you know that elephants can experience many of the emotions that humans can? Maybe that’s why this elephant is having such a fun time playing a game with its caregiver!

Elephants can experience some of the emotions that humans can.

Is it possible that we as humans just like putting our own emotive expressions on animals? Yes, it’s very possible. Are we gonna stop? No, we aren’t. Attributing specific human emotions onto these creatures may be taking some “creative liberties” on our part, but they aren’t always wrong!

While not weeping or laughing, specifically, elephants can cry tears of emotion!

Let’s look at the story of Raju. Raju is an elephant that lived a life of torture and pain. When rescued by some amazing people, Raju began to cry when they took off his chains and shackles. While almost making me cry, this story is not unique. There have been other reports of elephants exhibiting emotion after traumatic events.

Another example is little Zhuang-zhuang. After getting stomped on by his mother, he spent the next 5 hours crying. Even his caregivers couldn’t get him to calm down!

Crying may draw social attention to a hurting animal (or human!)

When humans cry, it is the outward expression of some type of event or angst on the inside. When these emotions become overwhelming for us, we start to cry messy, snotty tears. Some researchers believe this may be a result of social evolution. When we outwardly cry, it evokes a reaction from our social groups or caretakers.

Moms instinctively want to stop a crying baby and we all instinctively want to comfort a crying friend. Crying is like a distress call that brings our social group around us when we are hurting.

Elephants can read body language.

In the wild, elephants have complex social structures that often have physical signals correlated to them. For example, when elephants want to greet each other, they will entwine their trunks (like a human handshake). Elephants will even run after another elephant (or human) and pretend to trip as a game.

This all goes to show that there are complex social structures for these creatures. As a result of this, many captive elephants learn human body language and understand our own little social structures and language.

Much like humans, elephants have physical signals and signs that allow them to work as a social unit better.

If elephants recognize body language in other elephants, it makes sense that crying and laughing could be a part of their social structure.

The little elephant has a blast laughing and playing with its caretaker friend.

To come full circle, this little elephant may or not be laughing. The science is still out. What we can know, however, is that this little elephant is in a playful mood and is down to have some fun.

As the baby elephant runs around, chasing the basket it lets out these little noises that sound peculiarly like laughing. After playing with his new friend and then running back to his mother, it decides it wants more playtime and heads back out.

Anyone want a pet elephant now? I sure do.

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Source: Shareably, mnn, Asilia