This Is Why Humans Kiss

#1

I'm willing to bet you have. Kissing comes so normally to most of us, yet if you actually really think about it it's kind of on the weird/gross side.

#2

Previous studies estimated that 90% of human cultures did the whole kissing thing, but when more modern studies made it more specific and studied 186 cultures to see if they partook in romantic kissing (ruling out the platonic, or family based pecks), only 46% of cultures were found to get their sexy smooch on.

#3

That's, surprisingly, less than half which means the whole snogging thing isn't as far-reaching as we thought. And not only do only a section of humans partake in a smooch, but it's not practised in the animal kingdom either except by the occasional bonobo chimp.

#4

But why do we do it?

Freud, famous for his theories about childhood, believed that kissing had something to do with deep-set memories of the pleasures gained from sucking on your mother's breast. Lovely. But this theory isn't believed by many, mainly because if that were the case and it was just a reversion to boob-sucking, surely we would just suck boobs?

#5

Ethologists suggest that it's linked to courtship feeding, a behavior shown by some animal males, when they will provide packets of food (sometimes regurgitated but sometimes not) to their mate in order to sustain them and encourage them to produce a decent batch of eggs. But, this theory is often looked down upon because nothing is given or taken during a kiss other than spit. About 9ml to be exact.

#6

The most commonly believed theory has to do with hormones. To give it to you in its most simple form: when we kiss another human, it's a way to get a good taste and sniff of the hormones they are giving off to see if you're a compatible match. A good snog allows you to assess how closely related you are to the other person and whether you could produce children with a varied range of immune responses.

#7

The fact that no other animals partake in this behavior is possibly because humans have an absolutely terrible sense of smell. If you look at wild boars, they produce a pungent scent that includes the chemical androstenone that females find attractive because the more androstenone the male produces the more fertile he is.

#8

But the key part here is that wild boards have such an acute sense of smell from which they garner all of this information from quite far away, and don't need to get up in his grill and give him a smooch.

#9

Rutgers University anthropologist Helen Fisher says:

"There is evidence that saliva has testosterone in it, and there is evidence that men like sloppier kisses with more open mouth. That suggests they are unconsciously trying to transfer testosterone to stimulate sex drive in women."

#10

Men also could be using the swap of saliva to assess women's fertility and estrogen cycle, but Fisher warned that men should be careful not to scare the ladies off with too much slobber.

#11

And a detailed 2013 study by Wlodarski into kissing preferences found that how a potential mate smelled featured highly when asked what was important when it came to kissing, and the importance of smell increased when women were most fertile.

#12

So basically, we haven't figured out for sure the definite reason that humans play tonsil tennis, but it almost definitely has something to do with assessing compatibility.

Go on, go get your smooch on and try not to think about it too much.