the appeal to ridicule (also called appeal to mockery, ab absurdo, or the horse laugh) is an informal fallacy which presents an opponent's argument as absurd, ridiculous, or humorous, and therefore not worthy of serious consideration. Appeal to ridicule is often found in the form of comparing a nuanced circumstance or argument to a laughably commonplace occurrence or to some other irrelevancy on the basis of comedic timing, wordplay, or making an opponent and their argument the object of a joke. This is a rhetorical tactic that mocks an opponent's argument or standpoint, attempting to inspire an emotional reaction (making it a type of appeal to emotion) in the audience and to highlight any counter-intuitive aspects of that argument, making it appear foolish and contrary to common sense. This is typically done by making a mockery of the argument's foundation that represents it in an uncharitable and oversimplified way. Mockery in the arts Mockery is one form of the literary genre of satire, and it has been noted that "[t]he mock genres and the practice of literary mockery goes back at least as far as the sixth century BCE". Mockery, as a genre, can also be directed towards other artistic genres: The English comedy troupe, Monty Python, was considered to be particularly adept at the mockery of both authority figures and people making a pretense to competence beyond their abilities. One such sketch, involving a nearly-deaf hearing aid salesman and a nearly-blind contact lens salesman, depicts them as "both desperately unsuccessful, and exceedingly hilarious. The comicality of such characters is largely due to the fact that the objects of mockery themselves create a specific context in which we find that they deserve being ridiculed". In the United States, the television show, Saturday Night Live has been noted as having "a history of political mockery", and it has been proposed that "[h]istorical and rhetorical analyses argue that this mockery matters" with respect to political outcomes. Development in humans Mockery appears to be a uniquely human activity. Although several species of animal are observed to engage in laughter, humans are the only animal observed to use laughter to mock one another. An examination of the appearance of the capacity for mockery during childhood development indicates that mockery "does not appear as an expectable moment in early childhood, but becomes more prominent as the latency child enters the social world of sibling rivalry,