24 Facts About Social grooming

Social grooming is a behavior in which social animals, including humans, clean or maintain one another's body or appearance.

Social grooming is used as a means of conflict resolution, maternal behavior and reconciliation in some species.

Mutual grooming typically describes the act of grooming between two individuals, often as a part of social grooming, pair bonding, or a precoital activity.

Social grooming behaviour has been shown to elicit an array of health benefits in a variety of species.

In primates especially, grooming is known to have major social significance and function in the formation and maintenance of these friendships.

In species with a more tolerant social style, such as Barbary macaques, it is seen that females choose their grooming mates based on whom they know better rather than on social rank.

In general, social grooming is an activity that is directed up hierarchy, i e a lower ranking individual grooms a higher ranking individual in the group.

In meerkats, social grooming has been shown to carry the role of maintaining relationships that increase fitness.

From a utilitarian standpoint, stroking is a less effective technique for Social grooming than picking, but it is construed as being a more affectionate gesture.

Social grooming is critical for vampire bats especially, since it is necessary for them to maintain food-sharing relationships in order to sustain their food regurgitation sharing behaviour.

Social grooming relationships have been proven to provide direct fitness benefits to a variety of species.

Social grooming is considered a behavior of facultative altruism- the behavior itself is a temporary loss of direct fitness, followed by personal reproduction.

The grooming was evenly balanced across multiple bouts rather than single bouts, suggesting that females are not constrained to complete exchanges with single transactions and use social grooming to solidify long-term relationships with those in their social group.

In most cases, alloSocial grooming is an action that is learned from an individual's mother.

Apart from physical and mental constraints, perhaps a reason allogrooming animals do not use tools is because a major purpose of social grooming is social bonding and involves emotional exchanges, much of which is conveyed by touch.

In insects, Social grooming often involves the important role of removing foreign material from the body.

The honey bee, for example, engages in social grooming by cleaning body parts that cannot be reached by the receiving bee.

AlloSocial grooming is a behavior commonly seen in many types of cattle, including dairy and beef breeds.

Social grooming has shown to be correlated with changes in endocrine levels within individuals.

Macaques who participated in social grooming showed decreased levels of viral load, which points toward decreased levels of social stress resulting in increased immune function and glucocorticoid sensitivity.

Additionally, an article published in 1997 concluded that an increase in maternal Social grooming resulted in a proportionate increase in Glucocorticoid receptors on target tissue in the neonatal rat.

When potentially infanticidal male baboons immigrate into a group, the females' fGC levels are seen to rise, indicative of higher stress; however, females with reliable and well-established Social grooming partners have less of a fGC rise than those with weaker Social grooming networks.

Above all, the main criticism regarding studies concerning social grooming is that almost all of them focus on primates and a narrow range of species within primates themselves.

This, therefore, does not give us a well-rounded idea of what the cognitive or behavioural basis for social grooming is, nor does it completely outline all the effects of it.