Peeing is ‘contagious’ in chimpanzees
When a nearby ape starts urinating, other apes follow
Chimpanzees prefer to urinate together, researchers report this week in Current Biology. Researchers studying a group of 20 of the captive apes sifted through more than 600 hours of footage looking for instances of urination. The chimps were more likely to begin to pee if a nearby primate had already started. They were also more likely to join a urinating chimp who was more dominant in the group’s hierarchy. The study’s lead author told Scientific American that she went into this research knowing of at least one other primate that goes to the bathroom in groups–humans. Contagious urination has yet to be studied in the wild, but the possible discovery of another social behavior in chimpanzees, who are known to exhibit contagious grooming and synchronized walking, is not surprising, experts say.
