Scientists have found evidence suggesting that kissing dates back up to 21 million years and that our ape ancestors and Neanderthals likely locked lips, research published Wednesday said.<\/p>\n
Kissing has long presented an evolutionary puzzle to scientists as it appears to carry high risks such as disease transmission while having no obvious reproductive or survival advantages.<\/p>\n
But the new study found that the practice has evolved over millions of years, and that our extinct human relatives, the Neanderthals, could have shared a peck to stay warm in the ice age.<\/p>\n
The research led by scientists at the University of Oxford was published in the journal “Evolution and Human Behaviour”.<\/p>\n
“This is the first time anyone has taken a broad evolutionary lens to examine\u00a0kissing,” said co-author Matilda Brindle, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford.<\/p>\n
“Our findings add to a growing body of work highlighting the remarkable diversity of sexual behaviours exhibited by our primate cousins.”<\/p>\n
For the purpose of the study, researchers defined kissing as a “non-aggressive, mouth-to-mouth contact that did not involve food transfer”.<\/p>\n
“The results indicate that\u00a0kissing\u00a0is an ancient trait in the large apes,” evolving in primate ancestors from 17 to 21 million years ago, according to an Oxford University statement.<\/p>\n
“Kissing\u00a0was retained over the course of evolution and is still present in most of the large apes,” it added.<\/p>\n
The researchers first collected data about modern primates that have been observed kissing, including chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans.<\/p>\n
Then, treating kissing as a “trait”, they mapped it to the family tree of primates. By stimulating different evolutionary scenarios, they estimated the probability that ancient ancestors also engaged in kissing.<\/p>\n
Previous studies have found that humans and Neanderthals had shared oral microbes through saliva transfer, suggesting that the species had kissed each other.<\/p>\n
aks\/jkb\/har\/cc<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have found evidence suggesting that kissing dates back up to 21 million years and that our ape…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[157049,146439,157046,38887,157050,14561,157047,79,157048,5006,201],"class_list":["post-301970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ancient-ancestors","tag-disease-transmission","tag-evolutionary-biologist","tag-kissing","tag-matilda-brindle","tag-neanderthals","tag-primate-ancestors","tag-science","tag-survival-advantages","tag-university-of-oxford","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}