Over the years we’ve all been mesmerised by Sir David Attenborough, entertaining and intriguing us with so many social greetings and other interactions performed by creatures of land, air, and sea. Head bobbing, eye poking, lip smacking and - never to be ignored, bottom and genitalia sniffing! Some recent research projects have drawn parallels between greetings in the animal kingdom and our own, detailing the manner in which certain species greet one another and comparing these to our own.
So are we similarly instinctive in our behaviours as a species?
One project suggests that we may be able to assess physical fitness and fertility via saliva, another is studying peoples instinct to sniff their hands after hand shaking and what this might mean. There is also the proposition that the hugging and high-fiving of basketball teams may be directly related to their performance. While we're not entirely convinced by some of the theories suggested, it does non-the-less, make for interesting reading.
The overarching premise of the article, from the New Scientist which drew our attention to this research, is the inference that evolution might hold the key as to why many of us are currently struggling with social distancing and the general lack of physical contact we have experienced since the outbreak of the pandemic. Of course our prolonged hope is that this will not last longterm, and will not fundamentally change the way we interact. There is hope; world populations have suffered pandemics before and yet we have reverted back to close social contact and tactile communication. Is that a sign that this is our instinctive norm? Perhaps without it we are simply not human.
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