Why Do People Enjoy Kissing So?

Kissing is body language, of course, and it says a variety of things. There is the very perfunctory kiss where the lips hardly connect and the message is just as vague. It may be “I like you,” and it may be “I’m not even fully aware of you.” It’s a ritualized gesture. At the other end of the scale is the deep, erotic kissing you and your boyfriend enjoyed. To some people, this type of kissing is almost as satisfying as sexual intercourse and carries the same message of delight and love and pleasuring.

In between are all the ranges of kissing—from the mother who kisses her child, to the friends who kiss when they meet, the good-bye kiss and the hello kiss, the greeting kiss in France and other foreign countries, and the Mafia kiss of death as well as the often perfunctory husband-wife kiss in the morning.

Where did kissing start and why? That’s a question that still isn’t completely answered, though we have some good ideas about it. In the animal world, birds seem to do a good deal of kissing, but their kissing is an offshoot of a feeding procedure. Mother birds chew up and partially digest the food, then regurgitate it to pass it on to the babies. Gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans practice mouth-to-mouth feeding. This has been observed in zoos as well as in the wild, and not only between mother and baby, but also between adults. In fact, adult chimps in the wild, according to animal behaviorist Jane Goodall, greet each other by touching lips when they meet, without passing food.

This would indicate that the human kiss also derived from passing food, and there are still some primitive people who chew and predigest their food, then pass it by mouth to their children.

A German anthropologist, Dr. L. Hormann, writing before World War I, noted that young people in the Tyrol used to chew resin as we chew gum. In courting, a boy would offer some chewed resin to a girl. If she accepted, she would have to press her mouth to his while she bit the resin from between his teeth. The play involved a lot of fun and enforced kissing.

A search through the courting habits of other European countries will turn up a great many connections between kissing and feeding. Some European swains bring their fiancees food which must be eaten with kisses. Others pass wine from mouth to mouth.

In kissing, the same movements occur as in food passing.

There are very few human cultures that do not kiss. Darwin reported that kissing was not an innate act and that many people did not know about it, that New Zealanders, Tahitians, and Australians do not kiss, but later research has proved him wrong. There is always kissing between mother and child, but in some cultures, it becomes taboo in adult life or changes to nose rubbing.