Science has, of late, confirmed what teenagers have known for more than 3,000,000 years: a human female’s desire to mate increases in proportion to the amount she is kissed.
And when we say kissed, we mean… kissed. You know. As in French-kissed.
It turns out there’s a reason, and it has nothing to do with France. It isn’t even cultural; it’s biological.
The saliva of human males – teenage or otherwise – contains testosterone. And the membranes in the female’s mouth absorb it directly into her bloodstream. (There are other membranous tissues on the female’s accessible outer body that likewise do this absorbing trick – but we digress…)
Testosterone, however, is a male hormone – how is it that it increases sexual desire in women? Once it enters a woman’s bloodstream, it is converted by aromatase enzymes into estradiol – one of the forms of estrogen. (Though testosterone is associated with men, women’s bodies produce it, too – and necessarily, as it has nine different functions, including muscle repair, which women also require. It’s just that women’s bodies generally produce less of it.)
The study of these effects of kissing is called philematology, and it tells us much more: testosterone, for instance, is not the only happy juice that flows in a kiss. Production of oxytocin, dopamine, endorphins and adrenaline are all stimulated by kissing. It’s very much a win-win for both genders.
But there’s more going on here.
Though some male mammals pass on saliva via other means – wolves lick each other’s faces, for instance – kissing as we experience it is a primate innovation. Chimpanzees also do it, and bonobos do it even more often than we do, and for more diverse reasons (it’s a conflict resolution mechanism). And it probably drove our evolution.
As with the bonobo, the female of our species has her vulva positioned forward, rather than downward, as in other species. This leads to a female favoring of face-to-face mating (read: the beast with two backs), peculiar to those two species. And this gives the stimulatory kiss a conclusion that stimulates more frequent mating, an evolutionary bump.
And even more: both human and bonobo couples, mating face to face, gave into each other’s eyes – which of course does not occur in species which mate with the male mounting the female rearwards. And the consequences of this eye contact are tremendous.
The Theory of Mind accounts for the realization, among primates, that others of our kind experience the same inner life that we do as individuals – and is the foundation of consciousness. Consciousness underlies our social sophistication – and humans and bonobos, the only species to kiss as we do, mate as we do, and gaze into each other’s eyes as we do – are the most conscious, socially sophisticated species in existence.
Think about that, the next time you’re making out; what you’re doing with your partner is very probably what created human consciousness, and gave us minds that could roam the stars.
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