Why Are We Kissing?

Happiness is like a kiss: you fully enjoy it when it is offered to you by someone else.

Osculation, as the art of kissing, is pretentiously categorized by science, encompasses a complex of hidden phenomena, often unsuspected by the common man. What happens in the human body during kissing reveals the biological or evolutionary origins of meeting the lips.

First of all, the anatomy of the lips makes them very sensitive to touch. They represent not only the thinnest area of ​​the skin of the body but also one of the most crowded surfaces with sensitive cells.

Everyone who has tasted the spell of the kiss knows that the sensations involved in this intimate gesture are not only found in the mouth: the whole body reacts physically, and the brain signals to the body that something pleasant is happening!

5 of the 15 cranial nerves that influence brain activity transmit basic information about smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and even emotions. After receiving this data, the brain retransmits it in a myriad of chemical messages to release stress, to create a social bond with a potential partner or potential friends, to enhance the motivation to make love, and to stimulate the erotic impulse.

The level of cortisol involved in stress reactions in the whole body decreases after an episode of kissing causing a relaxing reaction. Lip contact, especially with a loved one, causes the release of endorphins and activates other brain-controlled hormones and neurotransmitters related to pleasure or euphoria.

The levels of these chemical factors act in areas of the brain that make us want more. Thus, the seemingly simple kiss has a complex role in "falling in love," in an erotic strategy that causes people to focus their sensual energy on certain people.

Give me a kiss!

If you look at it coldly, the kiss can be considered disgusting! By sticking your lips together you share not only love and a mutual attraction towards your partner; there is also an exchange of saliva and millions of potential colonies of bacteria! Originally, our ancestors shared more than saliva!

As early as 1960, the British zoologist Desmond Morris advanced the idea that kissing evolved from the feeding practice in which primate females chew food and feed their chicks mouth to mouth.

Even in the absence of food, primate chicks look into their mothers' mouths, finding relief in contact with their prickly lips. Primitive people could have practiced the same method with their children, the gesture of "kissing" continuing to manifest itself as a sign of affection or relief even after the children had learned to eat solid food.

Kissing, a dream promise

As women invest more energy in raising their children, they need to be more selective in choosing a partner. Can a simple kiss confirm their choice? As many of us have experienced, the first kiss can be crucial to the evolution of a relationship.

Psychologist Gordon Gallup found that more than half of women and men who had an initial attraction to a partner then gave up a relationship with him because of a first kiss that did not upset them. The pleasant way in no way.

While men may consider a passionate kiss as the first basis for a marital relationship, women use kissing as a means of gathering information about the degree of attachment in an ongoing relationship.

For a woman, a passionate kiss can communicate, in addition to erotic desire, the ability or energy of procreation, and the dedication in raising and caring for children of a potential father!

Summer kisses?

Possession of the art of kissing does not exclude its romantic side. Some researchers believe that by kissing we transmit and receive important information about genetic compatibility with a potential partner.

The smell of a potential partner during the kiss may suggest subconscious but essential data. The extent to which pheromones are involved in this process remains a controversial issue.

Although the kiss is not known to be a specific receptor or detector of pheromones in humans (such as that possessed by pigs or rats) some biologists believe that pheromones can be perceived as olfactory by humans. Scientists believe that a woman can smell certain proteins during a kiss, and this can make her decide on the attractiveness of a partner.

In some animals, males and females tend to choose a pair with a different histocompatibility complex (MHC), a marker of the immune system. Thus, mice can really smell how close or different a potential pair's MHC is to their own, and reject candidates with an MHC similar to theirs.

There is evidence that people prefer to procreate with partners with a different MHC. From Darwin's perspective, sexual selection is the key to transmitting our genes. As a reproductive strategy, these subconscious signals prevent us from "kissing our cousins," connecting with someone with DNA similar to ours, thus guiding us to procreate healthy children.

Regardless of how we explain our kiss, or its role in erotic attraction, fortunately, experiencing this magical contact between two human beings will always remain, I think, a mystery.