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Praise for Ed's previous novel, Lost in Translation:

"Edward Willett has arrived, and SF is the richer for it." -  Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Hominids

"A believable, absorbing, thought-provoking and highly enjoyable read." - Kathy Tyers, Author of the Firebird trilogy, Star Wars: The Truce at Bakura, and Star Wars: Balance Point

Well, the holidays are behind us, and that means the season of excessive kissing is behind us, too.

Now, don't get me wrong; I've got nothing against kissing, when the kissee is my wife. It's kissing strangers or even most of my friends I'm leery of. And yet, at Christmas time, there's mistletoe all over the place, plus an excess of holiday cheer, and the next thing you know, somebody you've met maybe once is dying to peck you on the cheek--or worse, smooch you on the lips.

Kissing is a rather odd custom. Even though our close relatives, the bonobos (a type of chimpanzee), love to kiss each other on the mouths--big, slobbering kisses--there are many human cultures where kissing is unknown. For instance, people on the island of Mangia in the South Pacific, as Chris Ainsworth notes in a recent article on the science of kissing in New Scientist magazine, knew nothing about kissing until Europeans arrived in the 1700s and showed them how to do it. That would seem to mean that kissing is learned, not innate, behavior.

But why did we learn it? For those not in the throes of passion--little boys, for instance, being urged to kiss Aunt Ethel --it seems a pretty disgusting habit, especially kissing on the mouth, when you exchange germs (by one estimate, 278 colonies of bacteria, on average), saliva and possibly bits of food.

One theory is that kissing has its roots in a time, millions of years ago, when women chewed up pieces of food and passed them directly from their lips to their babies' mouths. This could have led to kissing as a sign of affection between mother and child, one which spread to other relationships. But cultures where food is still passed on this way--in Papua New Guinea, for instance--knew nothing about kissing until, again, Europeans arrived.

Europeans have been kissing since at least to Greek and Roman times. The practice may have originated in India, where, around 1500 B.C., Vedic Sanskrit texts describe the custom of rubbing and pressing noses together, possibly the precursor for lip kissing.

Today we call that "Eskimo kissing" because it was practiced by the Inuit (many Pacific islanders practiced it, too). This form of "kissing" actually enables one person to inhale the odor of scent glands on the cheeks of the other person. It's also practiced by animals--your cat loves to rub his face against yours. That's because you can tell a lot about another person or animal by smell...and that smell isn't necessarily something you register consciously. For instance, research has shown that women subconsciously prefer the smell of men whose genes for a particular class of immune systems proteins are different from their own--presumably because offspring from such a match would have a stronger immune system, and hence a better chance of survival, than offspring from other men.

So kissing may actually have evolved as a way of unconsciously testing the genetic fitness of a potential mate. That's not why we consciously pursue it, however: we like it because it feels good, especially in conjunction with the chemistry--literally--between two people who are physically attracted to each other.

The lips and tongue are two of the most sensitive areas of your body, packed with nerve endings.

As for the chemistry, feelings of passion cause a surge of chemicals in the brain similar to those brought on by parachuting, bungee jumping, distance running and other sports activities. These chemicals, called neurotransmitters, attach to pleasure receptors in the brain, resulting in euphoria, giddiness, elation and such like. (Components in amphetamines are similar, which is why these drugs create similar feelings.)

When those feelings of passionate love are absent, kissing may still create a pleasurable physical sensation, but it will lacking that extra chemical spark that makes it memorable. (Actors who must kiss actresses on stage whom they may not even like know this very well.)

And when the feelings of passionate love are absent because you're an eight-year-old kissing Aunt Ethel, even giving a peck on the cheek can be a downright horrible experience, nerve endings or no nerve endings.

Context is everything...and we can all be glad that the kissing considered OK in the context of Christmas has once again faded away, and we can concentrate on kissing the people we really want to kiss for the next few hundred days.

These weekly columns on science appear in the Regina (Saskatchewan) Leader Post and Red Deer (Alberta) Advocate..  They are available for one-time publication or regular syndication to any interested newspapers, magazines or on-line publications.  E-mail me for details.

Posted January 2, 2001

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