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Published online 17 December 1998 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news981217-2
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A serious article about laughter
Question: What do you call a penguin in the Sahara desert?
Answer: Lost.
If you haven’t heard this joke before, there’s a good chance that you are now emitting a series of short vowel-like syllables such as ‘ha-ha-ha’ or ‘tee-hee-hee’, each about one sixteenth of a second long and about a quarter of a second apart.
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