study<\/a> published today in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.<\/p>\n What\u2019s a kiss? <\/p>\n
First, the team had to scientifically define what kissing is. That\u2019s harder than it sounds, given that many mouth-to-mouth behaviors might seem like kissing and the definition had to be consistent across different species. They ultimately decided on an incredibly romantic description: non-aggressive mouth-to-mouth contact without the transfer of food. Pucker up.<\/p>\n
Brindle and her colleagues then gathered previously documented information on modern primate species kissing, focusing on the monkeys and apes that evolved in Europe, Africa, and Asia, including chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans (all three of which have been recorded kissing). Treating kissing as an evolutionary \u201ctrait,\u201d the team ran a computer model 10 million times to simulate different primate evolution scenarios and estimate the chances of different ancestors kissing.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy integrating evolutionary biology with behavioural data, we\u2019re able to make informed inferences about traits that don\u2019t fossilise \u2013 like kissing. This lets us study social behaviour in both modern and extinct species,\u201d said Stuart West, co-author of the study and an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford.<\/p>\n
Kissing partners <\/p>\n
This method revealed that Neanderthals likely kissed, too. In addition to previous evidence demonstrating that humans and our now-extinct cousins transferred saliva and interbred with each other, the results strongly indicate that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals also smooched each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile kissing may seem like an ordinary or universal behaviour, it is only documented in 46% of human cultures,\u201d explained Catherine Talbot, co-author of the study and an assistant professor at Florida Institute of Technology\u2019s school of psychology. \u201cThe social norms and context vary widely across societies, raising the question of whether kissing is an evolved behaviour or cultural invention. This is the first step in addressing that question.\u201d<\/p>\n
Naturally, there are some important limitations to point out, given the methodology used. The paper is based on previously recorded behaviors and computer simulations, and not direct observations. This is particularly precarious when it comes to extinct species, including Neanderthals. What\u2019s more, data beyond great apes are sparse, limiting how far the findings can be stretched. The results also depend on the assumptions built into the models, which means the outcomes could vary with different parameters.<\/p>\n
At the very least, and as noted in the press release, the study offers a framework for future work and provides a way for primatologists to record kissing behaviors in nonhuman animals using a consistent\u2014if not a complete buzzkill\u2014definition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While kissing might feel like one of the most natural things in the world, this familiar behavior is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[5351,85,46,87721,26783,141,386],"class_list":{"0":"post-142205","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-evolution","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-kissing","12":"tag-primates","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}