question of the day

Who invented jokes, and why?

The inventor almost surely wasn’t human. There are too many examples of jokes among dolphins and crows. But could there have been jokes even in, say, the Jurassic era?

We tend to think of it as a grim and predatory era of cruel dinosaurs eating one another as quickly as possible or sinking hopelessly into tar pits. But maybe at least some of these creatures were playfully sarcastic even then.