Social urinating is so established that people tend to go to the loo in pairs or groups. — Filepic
If one of your buddies needs to poop or pee, you are more likely to need to go as well, scientists say, confirming that not only yawning is contagious.
Their study of chimps showed urinating is socially contagious.
When one chimpanzee in a group urinates, others often follow suit, the researchers found.
This applies even more strongly to chimps in closest proximity to the one who pees or poops first, says the Japanese team who undertook the research.
The study also cast light on why we tend to go to the loo in pairs or groups. People have been doing so for thousands of years across many different cultures, say the scientists, pointing to toilets in ancient Rome, when people sat cheek by cheek, chatting away on long marble benches with holes cut in them.
Social urinating is so established that an Italian proverb says, if you don’t pee in company, you are either a thief or a spy.
The Japanese, meanwhile, have a word to describe the act of urinating in a group: they call it tsureshon.
Plenty of artworks through the centuries celebrate the phenomenon and the chimps’ habits show that our tendency may have deep evolutionary roots.
“In humans, urinating together can be seen as a social phenomenon,” says Ena Onishi, lead scientist of the study.
She and her team from Kyoto University watched 20 chimps in Japan’s Kumamoto Sanctuary and recorded a total of 1,328 urination processes over a period of 600 hours. – dpa
