Great apes' touch promotes harmony, study reports

Durham University researchers find that bonobos and chimpanzees use reassuring physical contact—such as embracing, kissing, and even finger touching—before stressful events like food competition, suggesting an ancient mechanism for building trust and cooperation that may predate humans. In controlled observations at sanctuaries in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia, groups of bonobos and chimpanzees demonstrated that individuals who engaged in more comforting touch were more likely to eat peacefully when peanuts were distributed. The study notes phenomena like ‘reassurance trains’ where multiple apes embrace in sequence, and compares behaviors across species to infer an evolutionary origin for social touch. The findings imply that touch serves as a flexible, short-term tool to manage social tension and facilitate shared feeding, potentially contributing to group harmony. Researchers propose that these pre-stress bonding behaviors date back millions of years, highlighting a common ancestry with humans in which touch underpins trust and cooperation. The work adds weight to the idea that human practices like huddling before stressful events may be rooted in this ancient ape toolkit.