Mother macaque interacting with her infant. The mutual gaze is sustained and is interrupted by gaze shifts, apparently aimed at attending the object of interest of her infant. During this face-to-face interaction, the mother is gently pulling the infant's head and seems to be particularly attracted by the eyes of the infant. What we found very common are the lipsmacks that are documented in this video. These mouth-face contacts closely resemble the human kiss. We can only speculate about the possible origin of the human kiss from these particular mother-infant grooming activities.
See the paper by Ferrari et al.,
Current Biology 19(20), published online Oct. 8, 2009: [ Ссылка ]01690-X
