Accounts of teasing have a long history in psychological and sociological research, yet teasing itself is vastly underdeveloped as a topic of study. As a phenomenon that moves along the border between aggression and play, teasing presents an opportunity to investigate key foundations of social and mental life. Developmental studies suggest that preverbal human infants already playfully tease their parents by performing ‘the unexpected,’ apparently deliberately violating the recipient's expectations to create a shared humorous experience. Teasing behaviour may be phylogenetically old and perhaps an evolutionary precursor to joking. In this review, we present preliminary evidence suggesting that non-human primates also exhibit playful teasing. In particular, we argue that great apes display three types of playful teasing described in preverbal human infants: teasing with offer and withdrawal, provocative non-compliance and disrupting others' activities. We highlight the potential of this behaviour to provide a window into complex socio-cognitive processes such as attribution of others’ expectations and, finally, we propose directions for future research and call for systematic studies of teasing behaviour in non-human primates.

戏的叙述在心理学和社会学研究中具有悠久的历史，但戏as本身作为研究主题却远远落后。作为一种在侵略性和娱乐性之间的边界移动的现象，戏弄为研究社会和精神生活的重要基础提供了机会。发展研究表明，谚语人类婴儿已经通过表演“出乎意料的”来戏弄父母，这显然是在故意破坏接受者的期望，以创造共同的幽默感。戏easing行为在系统发育上可能是古老的，并且可能是开玩笑的进化先驱。在这篇评论中，我们提供了初步的证据表明非人类的灵长类动物也表现出嬉戏的玩笑。尤其是，我们认为，大猩猩表现出人类谚语中描述的三种嬉戏戏弄：挑逗和退缩戏弄，挑衅性的不依从行为以及破坏他人的活动。我们强调了这种行为的潜力，为深入了解诸如他人期望的归因等复杂的社会认知过程提供了一个窗口，最后，我们提出了未来研究的方向，并呼吁系统研究非人类灵长类动物的戏弄行为。