The Real Reason Humans Started Kissing

Kiss your assumptions goodbye! You may think you know why humans enjoy smooching, but a new study published this month has uncovered the surprising (and slightly gross) history behind why we lock lips.

Kissing: An Ancient Grooming Tool?

While we might associate kissing with romance today, this wasn't always the case. According to research conducted by Adriano R. Lameira, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Warwick in England, kissing actually began as a purely practical action. Originally, it was more about grooming than love, helping to keep parasites and lice in check.

Lameira’s study suggests that early humans adopted this habit from ape behaviour. In apes, “kissing” acts as the final stage of a grooming ritual, where the groomer uses their lips to latch onto debris, fur, or even parasites on another ape's skin.

This mouth-contact served a functional purpose, as it helped clean each other up—certainly not as romantic as a love poem or a moonlit kiss!

Related: New Chinese Kissing Device Lets You Smooch Over The Internet!

So, When Did Kissing Get Romantic?

As humans evolved with less body hair, the need for this kind of grooming lessened. However, the gesture remained, eventually transforming into what we know as kissing today.

But how kissing transitioned from a grooming ritual to a sign of romance and intimacy is still a bit of a mystery. Lameira calls this "a special case" of the behaviour, noting that further research is needed to understand exactly how kissing became intertwined with sexual and romantic intentions.

So, next time you go in for a kiss, remember—you’re participating in a behaviour that dates back to a time when we needed to help each other get rid of lice!