Among chimpanzees, peeing is contagious
Hate waiting in line for the bathroom? Chimpanzees have a social solution: Everyone go at once. A study now shows that among chimps, peeing is contagious. It’s “the first study to investigate contagious urination in animals,” says Shinya Yamamoto. He studies animal behavior at Kyoto University in Japan. His coworker, Ena Onishi, was first to get an inkling of this contagious tinkling. She, too, studies animal behavior at Kyoto University. And she spotted something odd while watching a group of captive chimps. @sciencenewsofficial Chimpanzees sync their pee! #chimpanzee #animals #science ♬ original sound – sciencenewsofficial – sciencenewsofficial https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js “I noticed a tendency for [them] to urinate at the same time,” she says. Onishi then wondered if peeing — like yawning and grooming — is contagious in these animals. To find out, she and some coworkers spent more than 600 hours studying 20 captive chimps. These animals lived at the Kumamoto Sanctuary in Japan. The team observed chimpanzees peeing more than 1,300 times. And the chimps were likely to pee together, these data revealed. If one …
