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Not only yawning is contagious. Scientists talk about another type of repetitive behavior

Anna BoklajukNews
Yawning is contagious and can spread across a room in seconds. Source: freepik.com

It's common knowledge that yawning is contagious and can spread across a room in seconds. But scientists say the same can be said for urination.

This can be traced back centuries – shared urination is represented in art, is present in folk proverbs, and continues to appear in modern social contexts. Since this behavior has not been scientifically proven before, scientists decided to investigate this fact using chimpanzees, who tend to urinate at about the same time, MailOnline writes.

The experiment involved chimpanzees living in the Kumamoto Nature Reserve in Japan. The researchers watched over 600 hours of video footage and analyzed 1328 times when the animals went to the toilet.

The results showed that the urination processes were significantly more synchronized than they would have been if the primates had just urinated randomly. The closer the chimp was to the one who had just urinated, the more likely it was to do the same. This was based on an analysis of the urination of chimpanzees that were within arm's length of each other, within three meters of each other, or further than three meters.

Study leader Ena Onishi said that in humans, urinating together can be seen as a social phenomenon and cited an Italian proverb as an example: "Whoever does not urinate in company is either a thief or a spy."

The scientists also emphasize that this behavior is represented in art across centuries and cultures and continues to appear in modern social contexts.

"Our research shows that this phenomenon may have deep evolutionary roots. We found that chimpanzees, our closest relatives, tend to urinate in response to urination from nearby individuals," the researchers said in a statement published in the journal Current Biology.

In addition, the study found that chimps with lower social status are more likely to copy someone else who has just urinated. This could be because those lower in the hierarchy are more closely watching more respected chimps, or because they are more stressed about their poor place in society.

"Since there had been no previous research on contagious urination in any species, we drew parallels with contagious yawning, another semi-voluntary physiological behavior," says Onishi, adding that they initially expected any social effects might be similar to those seen in yawning, such as stronger contagion between socially close pairs. However, the study results showed no evidence of effects related to social proximity.

"Instead, we observed a clear effect of social rank, with lower-ranking people more likely to observe others' urination," the researcher concludes.

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