Why do humans kiss?
-- asks Roberto Morabito from Brooklyn, NY.
Kristina Fiore • October 2, 2006
Scientists currently have no explanation for this particular KISS. (CREDIT: Wok)
Her eyes are wide as they stare into yours. You wrap your arm around her waist and pull her in close. She touches your face and you lean in, tilt your head – to the right, of course – and your lips connect. The rushing sensation leaves you little room to wonder, “Why the hell am I doing this anyway?”
Of course, the simplest answer is that humans kiss because it just feels good. But there are people for whom this explanation isn’t quite sufficient. They formally study the anatomy and evolutionary history of kissing and call themselves philematologists.
So far, these kiss scientists haven’t conclusively explained how human smooching originated, but they’ve come up with a few theories, and they’ve mapped out how our biology is affected by a passionate lip-lock.
A big question is whether kissing is learned or instinctual. Some say it is a learned behavior, dating back to the days of our early human ancestors. Back then, mothers may have chewed food and passed it from their mouths into those of their toothless infants. Even after babies cut their teeth, mothers would continue to press their lips against their toddlers’ cheeks to comfort them.
Supporting the idea that kissing is learned rather than instinctual is the fact that not all humans kiss. Certain tribes around the world just don’t make out, anthropologists say. While 90 percent of humans actually do kiss, 10 percent have no idea what they’re missing.
Others believe kissing is indeed an instinctive behavior, and cite animals’ kissing-like behaviors as proof. While most animals rub noses with each other as a gesture of affection, others like to pucker up just like humans. Bonobos, for example, make up tons of excuses to swap some spit. They do it to make up after fights, to comfort each other, to develop social bonds, and sometimes for no clear reason at all – just like us.
Today, the most widely accepted theory of kissing is that humans do it because it helps us sniff out a quality mate. When our faces are close together, our pheromones “talk” – exchanging biological information about whether or not two people will make strong offspring. Women, for example, subconsciously prefer the scent of men whose genes for certain immune system proteins are different from their own. This kind of match could yield offspring with stronger immune systems, and better chances for survival.
Still, most people are satisfied with the explanation that humans kiss because it feels good. Our lips and tongues are packed with nerve endings, which help intensify all those dizzying sensations of being in love when we press our mouths to someone else’s. Experiencing such feelings doesn’t usually make us think too hard about why we kiss – instead, it drives us to find ways to do it more often.
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About the Author
Kristina Fiore
By day, a mild-mannered reporter(former Newsday intern, current Daily Record part-timer); Alter-ego: lover of non-fiction narrative. “If he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, he will, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.” — Life of Pi
353 Comments
Kami
Really, the suffering and poverty that afflict so many humans are all good?
I’m sorry, but your creator, if he exists, is malevolent. As for “deciding we cme from animals”, we haven’t, that’s what the evidence points to. YOU are the one who has decided against evidence that we don’t. The more we learn the more the theory of evolution is supported by evidence. There is no evidence of design anywhere. And I mean evidence, not “gut feeling that all these things I don’t understand must have been made by someone”.
michael
yes, we all have strong ideas. Some are supported by evidence though.
I too must go now, to the pub. It has been fun, other than the occasional feeling of bashing my head against a brick wall. Kami, michael, please do us (and yourselves) a favour and read some of the talkorigins stuff, it really does address most of the issues you have (repeatedly) come up with here.
I think I will also bow out at this point, there’s only so much rehashing of the same arguments that I can take in one day. Kami, if you’re interested in going to the Usenet talk.origins forum on Google Groups, where I hang out and which is devoted to such topics, I may see you again.
I think I started as men and women are trying to eat each other.
This is hilarious. I really hate to break it to you, Kami, but there is a large community of scientists who believe that life in this universe is quite common. To be honest, the probability issue goes out the window when you consider the vastness of the universe. I hate to sound anthromorphic, but this conversation could be taking place on the planet Zorg if not here. To give you an idea of how common they expect life should be, look up the Fermi Paradox sometime. Basically, according to what we know about the scale of the universe and relative probabilities of intelligent life forming, there should be countless intelligent civilizations scattered throught the universe, and several within our own galaxy. So, why haven’t we heard from anybody… and therein lies the paradox.
that clears up some of my questions into the art of kissing.
All the protein chains for basic life are left handed. From there derives the improbability. If you don’t understand that, read up on the probability of life spontaneously forming from inanimate matter – basically, it’s impossible. All the arrogant postulating in the world can’t overcome the left-handed problem, and so to Ambi, Scott and Gothnet: good night.
From what I have heard and seen in the movies prostitutes don’t kiss.
the answer to “can we make life in a lab”
oops try this link
Eh, I can’t resist throwing this in. The leading theory of homochirality is a perfect example of what physicists call spontaneous symmetry breaking, and it happens quite naturally.
Ambi:
Waaay back, I asked:
How could a life form “capable of eating, breathing, self locomotion, basic behavioural capability and reproduction, spontaneously [pop] into existence from raw elemental materials”?
You answered:
“You’re skipping way, way ahead in the history of life. Those capabilities EVOLVED OVER TIME. You know, evolution? That theory you’re supposedly talking about?”
Ok, so I ask you: if these capabilities (basically required for any life form to be able to survive) evolved over time, how did the initial creature survive and propagate itself, so as to have a chance to evolve these abilities over time?
Miller’s experiments only generated a sparce handful of the amino acids that would be required for life, and none of them were organized the way we see in actual living organisms. And his experiments do nothing with regard to providing answers to the left handed problem.
Yes, but the key is that they were able to demonstrate that the fundamental building blocks of all life on earth can be readily created from abundant simple compounds. The exact processes that took place billions of years ago will likely remain unknown.
And what the hell do you mean by “left handed”?
“We are about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information …. ” – D. Raup, “Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology,” Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, vol. 50 (1), p. 24, 25
John Bonner, a biologist at Princeton, writes that traditional textbook discussions of ancestral descent are “a festering mass of unsupported assertions.” In recent years, paleontologists have retreated from simple connect-the-dot scenarios linking earlier and later species. Instead of ladders, they now talk of bushes. What we see in the fossils, according to this view, are only the twigs, the final end-products of evolution, while the key transitional forms which would give a clue about the origin of major animal groups remain completely hidden.
The blank spots on evolutionary “tree” charts occur at just the points where, according to Darwin’s theory, the crucial changes had to take place. The direct ancestors of all the major orders: primates, carnivores, and so forth are completely missing. There is no fossil evidence for a “grandparent” of the monkey, for example.
“Modern gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees spring out of nowhere,” writes paleontologist Donald Johansen. “They are here today; they have no yesterday.” The same is true of giraffes, elephants, wolves, and all species; they all simply burst upon the scene de novo [anew], as it were.
A transitional fossil is the fossil remains of a creature that exhibits primitive traits in comparison with the more derived life-forms it is related to. According to evolutionary theory, a transitional form represents an evolutionary stage.
But the fossil record has been against the Darwinian theory from the very beginning. It’s true that different kinds of organisms lived on the earth at different times. But what is not seen in the fossil record is the steady progressive change of one kind of thing into something completely different. Instead, if something new shows up in the rocks, it shows up all at once and fully formed, and then it stays the same.
If evolution means the steady progressive change of one kind of thing into something completely different, then the fossil record contradicts evolution.
Given the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record, evolutionists quietly acknowledge this is still a “research issue”.
There is virtually nothing in the fossil record that can be used as evidence of a transitional life form When apparent examples of useful mutations are examined thoroughly, it becomes clear that no transitional creatures exist anywhere in the fossil record.
It should be noted that Darwin himself believed that the first form of life was the result of intelligent design. See last paragraph of Darwin’s The Origin of Species (Sixth edition, January 1872): “There is grandeur in this view of life … having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one ….”
Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. ~ Eric Hoffer
When a valid criticism of Darwinism is first proposed, it is dismissed without an adequate response, either on some technicality or with some irrelevancy or by simply being ignored. As time passes, people forget that Darwinists never adequately met the criticism. But Darwinism is still ruling the roost. Since the criticism failed to dislodge Darwinism, the criticism itself must have been discredited or refuted somewhere. Thereafter the criticism becomes known as “that discredited criticism that was refuted a long time ago.” And, after that, even to raise the criticism betrays an outdated conception of evolutionary theory. In this way, the criticism, though entirely valid, simply vanishes into oblivion. ~ William Dembski
When you ask a Darwinist, ‘What evidence do you have for your mechanism that random variation and natural selection can actually do any creating?’ the Darwinist will say, ‘Well, tell me what God looks like, Why did he do this or that? I want you to show me God doing the creating because if you can’t show me that, we can get rid of God or the creator and what’s left is Darwinism, so it’s got to be true.’ It’s the variation of, ‘This is the only thing that could have happened, so it doesn’t have to be demonstrated, it can just be assumed to be true.’ And anyone who doubts that it could be true has to provide ironclad proof and justification for an alternative. ~ Phillip Johnson
As I pointed out, there is no “left-handed” (homochirality) problem. The leading theory holds that there were originally both chiralities, but since they couldn’t metabolize each other, they didn’t “interbreed”, and eventually one of them died out. A less popular theory ascribes the symmetry breaking to some kind of physical mechanism such as weak-force asymmetry. The existence of a single chirality certainly doesn’t imply anything about the improbability of life; I’m sure you’re thinking of some absurd argument like “what are the odds that every molecule was produced left-handed” or something equally dumb.
P.S. The original life was a self-replicating molecule, or perhaps more likely, a small set of such molecules which together autocatalyzed their own replication. “Breathing, self-locomotion, and behavioral capability” didn’t exist yet. “Eating” consisted of chemical reaction with neighboring molecules, which was equivalent to “reproduction”.
Now really, I’m out of here.
P.P.S. Quote-mining is the lowest form of debate.
My 2 cent’s worth on Evolution:
1) Life most likely started on another planet and was “seeded” on earth by comets/meteorites. If this is true, it began on a planet (or moon) that had the ideal environment for such a thing to occur.
2) If life requires “an intelligent hand” in order to begin, then where did the intelligent hand evolve from?
3) Most life on earth rely on energy from the sun (directly or indirectly) to survive. But the deep-sea vents have ecosystems based on energy derived from sulfur, not solar radiation. Clearly those life forms have evolved to ultilize sulfur.
I believe in a Higher Power, but don’t see any reason to reject the Theory of Evolution. I think the main problem people have with evoution is that they think (incorrectly) that if it is true then it means that God doesn’t exist.
Ambitwistor said:
———————————————
“Eating” consisted of chemical reaction with neighboring molecules, which was equivalent to “reproduction”
———————————————
So THAT’S where kissing came from :-)
Why do we kiss? It’s a form of social bonding. Why to pairs of Eastern Grebes dance together and entwine their necks? Why do monkeys groom each other? Why do wolf packs touch and rub against each other? It’s all about pair-bonding, group-bonding, and creating a social organization whereby the survivability of the genes locked in a group of intimate social animals is greater than the survivability of the genes of a similar group of animals which are not socially organized. The main mechanism is by intimacy and touching. Handshakes, backrubs, kissing, hugging, biting, fanny-slapping, whatever. The details are cultural, but the overall effect is to create a working social order. Different packs of wolves and baboon also show different ways of reinforcing social bonds, just like humans. Kissing is (in many cultures) reserved only for pair-bonding, which creates another level of social organization.
And the evolution debate is laughable. If evolution does not occur, then please explain the genetic difference between a dalmation and a chihuahua without using gradual genetic change over time, based on reproductive success. Controlled breeding is purely evolution at work, just speeded up by humans. You can observe it yourself if you doubt me, just get yourself three bottles of fruit flies (only $1.99 from most biological supply houses) and a Genetics 101 textbook. While you’re at it, try to explain how viruses and bacteria magically become drug-resistant without using evolutionary arguments.
WHO CARES WHY WE KISS?!?!?!?!?
I agree with Erika….we kiss it happens, it’s a great sport.
Some of you guys have valid opinions and others of you just like to rant incessantly. Do you guys have anything better to do?
Irreducible complex systems…completely insane. You might as well say we kiss because the planetary spin of Saturn is 47% faster than earth, causing an inequality of spacial distortions, thereby effecting temporal dimensions.
WE DO IT CUZ WE WANT TO.
I was interested in this article when i saw it because i was sure there had to be a reason that i desire a kiss above all “sexual” acts. Now some may disagree but i think that the kiss can be the most intimate part of a physical relationship. The feelings you get right before the first kiss, the butterflies. Now i know there is scientific explanation for the reasons we feel these things when we kiss. But why cant we just chalk it up to “it feels good, it’s a connection to someone we have attraction towards, let it just be what it is” I know that’s a girlie thing to say but hey, im a girl. I also would like to point out the resemblance between the lips and the female …. “sex” (i dont know how graphic i can get on here) i dont know how cement the fact is but there seems to be a connection there. Also, why does everything we do have to be some deep rooted aspect? Technically there is no need for oral sex. People do it because it feels good. All im saying is (and i think i speak for a good amount of my female friends) there is nothing better then a long passionate kiss. Heck, after talking about it i may have to go makeout with my roommate….and he’s gay.
“Regardless, it’s still disgusting. They don’t mention that over 200 bacteria colonies are exchanged during a kiss.”
Has anyone ever seen the “Debbie Downer” skit on Saturday Night Live?
P.S.-i dont really think this article gave us much to go on.
I would also like to mention that the women are making the most sense here, and we over analyze EVERYTHING. but give it a rest guys….maybe some of you just havn’t been kissed like you should.
very interesting conversation. this entertained me greatly.
P.S.
I love kissing.
“Regardless, it’s still disgusting. They don’t mention that over 200 bacteria colonies are exchanged during a kiss.”
I’m pretty sure sexual intercourse would exchange a lot more than that actually.
with my experience in kissing (wich is extensive)i feel that kissing is sort of a segway to sex
*but thats just me*
my mommy gives me butterfly kisses everynight before beddie-byes
this is one of the myriads of unexplainable things of nature !!!
Kami
One last thing, I don’t want to kick off the argument again, but there are plenty of transitional fossils. We have good evidence of that. Whoever is feeding you these arguments is deliberately feeding you misinformation..
this page has fully cited examples.
This page covers any other objections you might have to paleontology and the fossil record.
Really, all the arguments you use have been dealt with before and proven to be wrong. I’m not saying there is no god or that science precludes god, really, just that your strict interpretation of a creator is demonstrably incorrect. This stuff actually happened.
Kami “Ask a Darwinist to show you evidence and they will say ‘Well, tell me what God looks like, Why did he do this or that? I want you to show me God doing the creating because if you can’t show me that, we can get rid of God or the creator and what’s left is Darwinism, so it’s got to be true.'”
Oh my god you’re ignorant. We have evidence by the boatload for evolution. You have a feeling, a belief that god did everything, and not just that he did everything but that he did it in a way that precludes evolution. You do not have evidence.
YOU are the one saying “well I’m going to ignore the evidence and deny evolution, and once that’s gone we don’t have a proper explanation so it must be god!”
Get a clue, that’s not science, that’s nonsense. And stop trying to tar legitimate scientific endeavor with your assumptive brush. Seriously, I’m starting to find yuour agenda here offensive.
“Gothnet”:
(See how much travel this name will get you in Montreal these days, but that’s another story)
No-one here has shown me any evidence of evolution. Just a lot of links to lists of attitudes written by evolutionists.
And you are falling back on the old evolutionist tactic, if you can’t defeat the reasoning or provide logical responses, insult the questioner. Question his or her education. Ask, “Is he RELIGIOUS?” (Insert sneer.) It makes me wonder about the real depth of your arguments, when evolutionists consistently fall back on these schoolyard bully tactics when faced by people who don’t think evolution is correct.
I’ll tell you what I’ve seen from the fossil record. I’ve seen a lot of old bones. Some of them are very interesting, and show various interesting features these animal creatures had. Many of these creatures are likely extinct, or if not they were examples of animals born with birth defects. But never have I seen anything to lead me to think that these old bones are somehow, automatically, my ancestors bones or that they’re some “inbetween” species. I’ve seen a few pieces of jaw bone found. What does the scientific journal show? An artist’s conception of an 8 foot tall ape man! How do you get that from a little piece of jaw bone? I’ve seen ape skulls in varying states of disrepair. If Lucy had elongated forearms and walked with the aid of her knuckles, I’m sorry, she was an APE, not a HUMAN (no humans save those with serious physical deformities walk with their hands. We walk UPRIGHT.) Paleontologists like Chen have stated that the fossil record shows massive diversity of species SUDDENYLY APPEARING, WHOLE and then staying the same until they disappear. Just like our findings today – if you introduce genetic mutation, it does not stay. Descendants of the mutated creatures revert back to the original DNA programming in a few generations.
Quit your pathetic mudslinging and come up with some real arguments, and maybe we’ll have something approaching a real debate here.
I have never understood why if one believes in God, then evolution and other scientific theories must be wrong… or if one agrees with the theory of evolution then they can’t possibly think there is a God. I would think that God would be the greatest of all scientists and could surely create things in totally scientific way.And once created, could observe the evolution of that creation. Just because there was a “Big Bang” doesn’t mean it wasn’t God who made that Big Bang occur. Some of you might find this interesting:
http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com
scroll to the bottom of the page and click
“New Scientific Evidence For The Existence of God”
Well, Kandy, I see your point – and I think God is the greatest scientist ever. He created science. But the idea that you can believe the creator created everything by evolution just doesn’t hold water. The “Big Bang” theory is very well-known but it doesn’t explain a lot of things astronomers and physicists have discovered about our universe. Very likely, though, the universe did start as a small singularity that was then expanded outwards at a measured pace. The idea of a “Big Bang” (explosion) was put forward to explain how the universe could have supposedly formed on it’s own – with no guidance. (Ergo, atheism.) And evolution is as well the keystone of the belief that there is no creator. Not that I’m saying everyone who believes in evolution doesn’t believe in a creator; many likely do. But really, it is illogical to try and reconcile the two. As I said above, if you’re going to build a car, you don’t start with a bicycle and adapt from there – you just build a car from the raw materials available. The only reason a creator might have to change one being into another could be that the species’ purpose was no longer required – for instance, if dinosaurs were used to terraform earth (plow up the earth, spread vegetation around, etc.) then once that stage of development was done, they wouldn’t be needed anymore. (When the lot is prepared, you don’t keep the bulldozer anymore, you send it back…) So, perhaps, those creatures were changed into new creatures that would fit the next stage of development (birds, maybe, or perhaps totally different creatures.) This could be done through genetic modification. (If that creator built the system, he would know how to modify it.) But all of these processes required intelligent influence and direction. As does any construction an development project.
Kami
No, I have provided links to material that scientifically refutes your repetetive, mindless nonsense. Many of the answers there link to further evidence.
The “scientists” you site have either been deliberately misinterpreted or had their arguments discredited.
The “facts” you state, like men being closer to mice than chimps or species suddenly appearing, not changing, then disappearing are all patently FALSE.
I no longer have time to argue with someone who has such an obvious agenda of denial as you.
Kandy
Please don’t listen to that nutcase, it is a small proportion of (largely USian) fundamentalists that have this particular malfunction. Most Christians around the world have no issue with evolution. Especially since the theory of evolution has nothing to do with either the origins of the universe or life, only how life changed since it’s initial forms. Kami and those like him/her are trying to conflate the theory of evolution with origin theories and atheism, which is absurd. There is no reason god could not have used evolution as his/her creation mechanism. The heads of the anglican and catholic churches both accept this. People like Kami do not and are trying to turn the issue into some sort of war.
Science and religion do not need to be at odds, it is only when people like Kami make an argument out of nothing and then deliberately cloud the waters with stupid and repetetive arguments that we get into a situation like the US has today where children are taught nonsense in some areas because of misguided religious intent.
As long as we’re trading broadsides, Mr Scientific, you should learn how to spell. :D
Big whoop, I spelled “repetitive” incorrectly. Twice!
At least I know what evolution is before I start arguing about it, you seem to think it covers everything from the big bang to abiogenesis.
It is you who have elevated what began as a reasonably calm debate to a series of over-inflated insult flingings, “Gothnet” person. I don’t have a problem with science. My religious beliefs are not what we are discussing here. And no, I am not a fundamentalist. Once again, anyone questions the tenets of the evolution theory and they must be a redneck fundie from the South, huh? Back off Gothboy. There are serious problems with the theory of evolution as it is arrogantly taught around the world, and there are a lot of scientists whose findings have questioned the theory. Live with it. It’s my choice to question the theory, it’s my right to debate it publicly, and despite the attempts of academics with superior attitudes, ongoing discussion and debate will not be silenced or censored.
Once again, the merits of your arguments are seriously brought into question by the insecurity obviously displayed in your debate tactics! If you are so sure of yourself, why do you need to use schoolyard bully tactics and silly insults? Why do you assume I’m a religious person, or a religious fundamentalist? Why do you call me ignorant, when I merely asked some thought provoking questions? Why is your cage sooo rattled, Mr. Gothnet? Perhaps you are a bit unsure of your position, after all.
sheesh… kami, evolution is one of the most logical descriptions of factual observations… pure science infact. Observe, hypothesize, test, refine. This is a theory that has undergone hundreds of years of scrutiny and is still unrefutable.
The theory makes so much sense it hurts. If a creature or species is not fit for survival, it will die. Genetic traits that are well adapted to the existing environment (including ecosystem, climate, predators, food supply), will continue to persist through successful offspring.
But the environment on this planet, though relatively stable has undergone massive changes over short periods of time on several occasions, and these are the periods where we see the most speciation in the fossil record.
It should also be considered that your transistory creatures do in fact exist, classic examples including the lung-fish, amphibians in general, archaeopterix, and how about the platypus. Lets not forget about embryology… yes, you had gills for a few weeks in your mother’s womb.
Additionally, transitory creatures would most commonly exist in these transitional periods. Look up the whole eon, era, period, epoch breakdown, called the geologic time model. The timeline is demarcated by significant events that drastically transformed life on the planet (like a meteor impact or an ice-age), and after such an event, a new emergence of biodiversity flourished in this new, significantly different environment. Relatively rare genetic traits that were previously unsuccessful would rapidly dominate the gene pool if they suddenly became successful in the new environment. Old species die out, new ones emerge, very quickly, and exist for very long periods, whereas transitional periods are comparably short.
Again..
pure logic
Why do whales have fingers and legs?