Episode Details

Humans do it, chimpanzees do it, even polar bears do it. And now a study has shown that kissing likely evolved about 21 and a half million years ago.

人类会接吻，黑猩猩也会接吻，甚至北极熊都会接吻。而如今，一项研究表明，接吻很可能是 2150 万年前出现的。

The mouth-on-mouth kiss is actually something of a biological puzzle, with no obvious survival or reproductive benefits, so the Oxford University-led team gathered evidence of animals that kiss each other on the mouth and worked out their evolutionary relationship to each other and to humans. This revealed that kissing probably evolved in the last common ape ancestor of humans, chimps and bonobos

嘴对嘴的接吻其实是一个生物学谜题，这个行为对生存和繁殖并没有明显的益处。所以，一个由牛津大学主导的团队收集了动物互相之间会亲吻嘴部的证据，然后找到了它们彼此之间以及和人类之间的进化关系。这一研究发现接吻很可能是在人类、黑猩猩和倭黑猩猩的最后一个共同猿类祖先身上进化出来的。

The study suggested that Neanderthals probably kissed too, and that they may have smooched with modern humans when the two species lived alongside each other. The researchers hope that the insight will encourage more scientists to gather data that could finally help solve the evolutionary mystery of why we and many other animals kiss.

这项研究认为尼安德特人很可能也会接吻，并且他们和现代人类在共同生活的时候可能接吻过。研究人员希望这个发现能鼓励更多科学家收集资料并最终解开为什么我们和许多其它动物会接吻这个进化谜题。