Is peeing contagious in chimpanzees?

A brand new examine has for the primary time described a phenomenon researchers check with as ‘contagious urinations’. The examine of 20 captive chimpanzees residing on the Kumamoto Sanctuary in Japan reveals that, when one chimpanzee pees, others usually tend to comply with. The researchers documented peeing behaviours within the Kumamoto chimpanzees over greater than 600 hours, together with 1,328 urination occasions. They analysed the observational information to see whether or not peeing among the many chimpanzees was considerably synchronized in time. The proof confirmed that urination occasions have been considerably extra synchronised throughout observations than could be anticipated if the chimpanzees have been merely peeing at random instances with respect to at least one one other. The chance of contagious urination additionally elevated with bodily proximity to the preliminary urinator, they report. Curiously, people with decrease dominance ranks have been extra more likely to pee when others have been peeing. The discovering means that urination patterns are influenced by social hierarchy, with a bent for the behaviour to ‘circulation down’ the dominance construction.