We have to brush our teeth twice a day or they rot, shower or we smell like shit, wash our face or we get blackheads etc.
In: Biology
The idea of cleaning oneself is to prevent disease and parasites (and sometimes mating things or aerodynamics, but mostly for health). There are some animals that don’t have to worry as much, like a shark that has feeder fish or a land snake that sheds its skin.
But a house cat? I swear half the time they’re awake. Gorillas spend a chunk of each day eating bugs from each other. Birds preen continuously. Elephants do the hose thing with the noses, when they can. Obviously in dry times they just have to lump it. So some of it is the creatures is prevented from spending time cleaning itself.
For instance, water snakes find drifting flotsam and go ham rubbing up on it to get off parasites. Often they cannot find any and suffer from disease as a result. Once they find something to rub on, will stick around it until they absolutely have to go find food.
Personally, my keep clean routine isn’t that long. Shower for fifteen if I’m really scrubbing, and then everything else, deodorant, teeth, brushing hair, changing clothes, could boil down to a total of half an hour perhaps? That’s rounding up snd still not too bad compared to some of these animals.
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