Why do we kiss?
In: Biology
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Do most cultures kiss? Growing up I never saw anyone in my family kiss and I don’t enjoy it at all.
Originally tongue kissing was a way to pass chewed food from parent to infant
And it still happens today in some cultures.
It evolved to be great way to show intimacy.
Better foods (and cooking techniques) came along meaning we didn’t have to chew our children’s foods.
The feeling of intimacy remained and more and more came to have a romantic connotation.
I’ve heard that it likely started by moms or grandmothers who pre-chewed food for toddlers who needed to stop nursing, so the mother would be more free to contribute work to the families survival, or to have more children, which can improve survival on a tribal scale.
Either way, when young men want a sexual partner, kissing is a solid pre-requisite to arousing a potential mate, so men kiss to get women horney.so then, the real question is, why would females be evolved to enjoy kissing before choosing a mate?
One possible answer is that it allows the female to get a better sample of pheromones and other chemical markers that can imply health and physical compatibility. Females may not even realize that these influences are at play.
Of course, who knows?
I like the theory that our lips and mouth are sensitive simply due to evolutionary necessity (to stop you from burning or otherwise damaging your mouth) and touching any sensitive area is pleasurable so we just figured that out at some point and there’s no further deeper meaning behind it.
Everyone has a unique immune system.
When kissing, your brain is learning what the other person’s immune system is like. Ideally, you want someone who has a different immune system than you, because your progeny will have a wider immunological coverage.
[There’s some study](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/birth-control-pills-affect-womens-taste/) into women’s preferences for men changing depending on whether or not they are on birth control. The essential argument is that women’s brains want genetically diverse men to father their children, but genetically similar men to raise them. Because the pill forces a woman’s body to perpetually think it’s pregnant, this can lead to a shift in preference after she’s off it.
TL;DR
Kissing is you testing your mate’s immune system for the survival of your potential future spawn. Snog accordingly.
A definitive conclusion has not yet been reached on the matter, but several theories have been proposed, which typically fall into two categories:
1. Kissing is an evolved trait. These theories are supported by kissing-like behaviours observed in many mammals, including other primates, which scientists have usually attributed to having grooming purposes. The most common thought on the specific behaviour kissing evolved from is premastication (not to be confused with premasturbation), which is when one animal chews food and then transfers it to the mouth of another animal, usually parent to child. Another theory in the evolutionary vein is that kissing lets us check the quality of our potential mates’ saliva, but frankly I think that’s ridiculous. When was the last time you heard anyone say “Well I knew from tasting his saliva that he must have had dysentery”?
2. Kissing is a learned behaviour. This theory usually either posits that kissing appeared within many different cultures simultaneously early in human history (at least before 3500BC, which is the earliest recorded evidence of a kiss taking place), or that one of the earliest groups of humans invented the cultural trait, which stuck with us through every single human population and migration since then.
Both theories have holes they can’t answer, which is why we don’t have a consensus on it yet. We may never figure it out.
There’s a really well-made (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixQbCXLUUj8) by Vsauce on this.
There’s a theory that kissing also pre-exposes women to herpes simplex virus (the one that causes cold sores). This is important because if she acquired it while pregnant, it can harm the fetus, and HSV infections have been known to kill infants. However, if the woman’s body already harbors it, then it has some defense against the virus and will better protect her offspring.
vsauce has an amazing video about it! you can find it [here](https://youtu.be/ixQbCXLUUj8) 🙂
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