#great-apes

#great-apes

Brindle and her colleagues, Catherine Talbot of the Florida Institute of Technology and Stuart West of Oxford, wanted to evaluate kissing from an evolutionary perspective. So they searched through past studies for modern examples of primates smooching, defined rather unromantically as non-agonistic interaction involving directed, intraspecific, oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer. They found that just like humans, great apes kiss for a variety of reasons, from conveying sexual desire to indicating friendly, affectionate feelings.