Why do we kiss? Is there an evolutionary advantage to it? This article tries to answer that question.
A kiss has been a signal of special affection across continents and cultures for millennia. Between times and peoples, social norms invariably prescribe kissing to specific affiliations and contexts, implying deeper biological bases. Why the protruding of the lips and slight suction when touching another?
Capuchin monkeys stick their fingers in their friends' eyes as sign of affection, why have humans developed kissing?
Here I briefly review proposed hypotheses for the evolution of human kissing. Great ape social behavior suggests that kissing is likely the conserved final mouth-contact stage of a grooming bout when the groomer sucks with protruded lips the fur or skin of the groomed to latch on debris or a parasite. The hygienic relevance of grooming decreased over human evolution due to fur-loss, but shorter sessions would have predictably retained a final “kissing” stage, ultimately, remaining the only vestige of a once ritualistic behavior for signaling and strengthening social and kinship ties in an ancestral ape.
Adriano R. Lameira, "The evolutionary origin of human kissing" Evolutionary Anthropology (October 17, 2024) https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.22050
2 comments:
I think kissing was the halfway point between mother & weaning child, pre masticated salivated soupy food bolus being projected out of the mother's mouth by her tongue and child suckling it with its tongue. At early puberty, kissing is childlike, both suck; later french kissing becomes more mother-like, projecting tongues into other's mouth, which then becomes the habit for child feeding.
Or maybe some parasite genetically programmed humans to kiss in order to spread? :0
:{} smooch
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