Caterpillar Cowboy

Dogs are social animals and, if you agree with the work of Ray Coppinger (among others), then we learned some, perhaps all, of our group social behavior from wolves. And wolves, just like the dogs in my bed, spent much of their day touching one another than humans.

Or, if you disagree with Coppinger, and hold that we learned our social skills from our primate progenitors, then what about our closest cousin: the bonobo.

The bonobo lubricate all social interaction with physical contact. Sure, we use another word for this, using ‘sex’ as a stand in for ‘contact,’ but the point is these animals are constantly touching one another. Boy on boy, boy on girl, girl on girl, close relatives, absolute strangers—sex (meaning physical contact) is how they say hello.

Now, some might point out that there’s a difference between sex and other forms of physical contact, but a great number of evolutionary thinkers (led by Stanford evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden) now disagree. They see all physicality as a bonding exercise much more than a procreating exercise.