rustfoxes:

Quite a few have been saying:”But what about laughing?”, in the comments of my ‘Weird Human Reactions to Fear: the Singing Edition’ post. My question is: do you know why humans laugh when shit gets real?

Laughter is our brain’s Blue Screen of Death.

Where a computer would throw up an error and possibly crash, our brains go:”well, shit”, and hit the big red button labelled: ‘LAUGHTER (and possibly applause, but probably not applause)’. Since we need our brains 24/7, we don’t have the luxury of error messages. So our brains buy some time to figure out what’s going on by making us laugh in the weirdest situations.

Imminent doom? Laugh.

Absolutely livid? Laugh.

Distraught? Laugh.

Pretty sure you’re gonna die? Laugh.

I mean, we can’t be sure the aliens don’t have brains that work the same way, but seeing as other animals on Planet Earth don’t really have that either… that’d probably freak them the fuck out too.

Not only do the gangly bipeds sing when they’re scared, they could just as easily start laughing.