July 7, 2016.
While kissing on the mouth is common to a large majority of humans, the exact origin of this practice remains a mystery to science. Is it really romance or just a bacterial swap? Some researchers have attempted to answer the question.
The quality of a relationship observable by the frequency of kisses
Why do we kiss each other on the mouth? This is the question that researchers in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford have tackled. In works published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior and Human Nature, the latter assert that we have many good reasons to kiss each other.
After a study carried out on 900 adults, these researchers wanted to observe the perception of men and women on the kiss. According to the results of this survey, women would be more attached to kissing than men. In a short-term relationship, the kiss has particular importance before sex when, in a long relationship, the latter has the same importance throughout the relationship. Finally, the frequency of kissing in a couple would be linked to the quality of a relationship.
Swapping our bacteria strengthens our immune system
Another theory, less romantic, which can explain the role of the kiss in the couple, has just been supported by Dutch scientists, who published their findings this week in the journal Microbiome. They started from an observation: kissing with the tongue is a practice common to 90% of the cultures known today in the world. This practice would also have a therapeutic function, due to the exchange of bacteria between the two members of the couple.
A 10-second kiss actually represents 80 million bacteria exchanged.. The mouth is home to 700 different types of bacteria. Knowing that pooling our bacteria would strengthen our immune system, kissing then becomes “very healthy”, assures Remco Kort, one of the authors of the study.
Read also: Why do we close our eyes when we kiss?
