The power of touch in the animal kingdom: Study reveals the role of touch in sustaining friendships and cooperation

Key elements of the caring touch hypothesis. Credit: Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2024.11.017
An international research team led by the University of Constance and Oxford Brookes University has concluded that gentle touch is not only good for your mental health, but also good for developing collaborative relationships.
The power of touch and social connections helps people cope with an increasingly stressful world, as the recent decline in mental health shows. Gentle, caring touch plays an important role in strengthening interpersonal relationships and boosting mental health.
This is often referred to as emotional touch or comforting touch, and is associated with many health benefits, including enhanced social connection and trust, reduced stress and pain, and improved mental health. . As the Konstanz-based researcher and his team observe, caring and gentle social contact also plays an important role in animal life and may even enable the evolution of cooperation.
In a study recently published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, an international research team led by Michael Grieser from the University of Konstanz and its Cluster of Excellence in Collective Behavior and Miya Warrington from Oxford Brookes University found that the animal kingdom Synthesizing evidence from the critical role of contact in the evolution and persistence of friendship and cooperation in animals.
Greaser and Warrington noticed differences in the level of contact and cooperation between the two bird species they study: the apostlebird of the Australian outback and the Siberian jay of Swedish Lapland. They do not groom each other and do few cooperative tasks, whereas high-touch apostlebirds groom each other and cooperate in many situations, including joint care of chicks. I observed that.
In collaboration with primatologists Judith Burkardt and Natalie Uomini of the University of Zurich in Switzerland, and African mammal physiologists Nigel Bennett and Daniel Hart of the University of Pretoria in South Africa, they investigated contact between birds, hormones, The common characteristics of cooperation were investigated. and mammals. Surprisingly, this joint study revealed that contact plays an important role in forming and maintaining social bonds in general, directly influencing how animals cooperate.
The word “cooperation” is used for many actions that benefit the individuals involved, Warrington explains. “But in reality, not all such actions are done out of kindness or out of a bond with the other person. In fact, cooperative actions do occur.” along the spectrum. ”
For example, on one end of the spectrum, there are animals like impalas that groom each other to remove parasites on their necks that they can’t reach themselves. So this is very transactional behavior. At the other end of the spectrum, animals like marmosets live in family groups, where group members do everything together, regardless of direct benefit. Therefore, marmosets are highly prosocial in most aspects of life.
This extent of cooperation is not entirely unexpected and reflects the great diversity in how and why species cooperate. “As observed in apostolbirds and Siberian jays, the diversity of cooperation is related not only to the level of contact but also to the sensitivity of contact and the type of natural bond,” Grieser explains.
In fact, this is seen in non-social mole rat species, which have few touch receptors on their skin and are not sensitive to touch, but the opposite is true for social mole rat species, such as the eusocial naked mole rat. .
In social species, the caring touch that offspring receive early in life sets in motion dynamics that continue into adulthood. Greaser and Warrington argue that, as a result, animals raised in close social bonds develop relationships not only with their families, but also with other adults, in partnerships and friendships, and in their own lives. , observe that they are more likely to cooperate socially. Parent-child relationship.
Further information: Michael Griesser et al, “The power of caring touch: From survival to prosocial cooperation,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2024.11.017
Provided by University of Konstanz
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