Grooming (also called preening) is the

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

and practice of cleaning and maintaining parts of the body. It is a

species-typical behavior The ethological concept of species-typical behavior is based on the premise that certain behavioral similarities are shared by almost all members of a species. Some of these behaviors are unique to certain species, but to be 'species-typical,' they ...

In animals

Individual

animal Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the Kingdom (biology), biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals Heterotroph, consume organic material, Cellular respiration#Aerobic respiration, breathe oxygen, are Motilit ...

s regularly clean themselves and put their fur, feathers or other

skin Skin is the layer of usually soft, flexible outer tissue covering the body of a vertebrate animal, with three main functions: protection, regulation, and sensation. Other cuticle, animal coverings, such as the arthropod exoskeleton, have diffe ...

coverings in good order. This activity is known as personal grooming, a form of

hygiene Hygiene is a series of practices performed to preserve health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "Hygiene refers to conditions and practices that help to maintain health and prevent the spread of diseases." Personal hygiene refer ...

. Extracting foreign objects such as

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs ...

s, leaves,

dirt Dirt is an unclean matter, especially when in contact with a person's clothes, skin, or possessions. In such cases, they are said to become dirty. Common types of dirt include: * Debris: scattered pieces of waste or remains * Dust: a gener ...

, twigs and parasites is a form of grooming. Among animals,

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

s spend considerable time preening their feathers. This is done to remove ectoparasites, keep the feathers in good aerodynamic condition, and waterproof them. To do that, they use the preen oil secreted by the

uropygial gland The uropygial gland, informally known as the preen gland or the oil gland, is a bilobed sebaceous gland possessed by the majority of birds used to distribute the gland's oil through the plumage by means of preening. It is located dorsally at th ...

, the dust of

down feathers The down of birds is a layer of fine feathers found under the tougher exterior feathers. Very young birds are clad only in down. Powder down is a specialized type of down found only in a few groups of birds. Down is a fine thermal insulator an ...

, or other means such as dust-bathing or

anting Anting () is a town in Jiading District, Shanghai, bordering Kunshan, Jiangsu to the west. It has 96,000 inhabitants and, after the July 2009 merger of Huangdu (), an area of .

. During oil spills,

animal conservation Conservation biology is the study of the conservation of nature and of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction and the erosion of biotic interactions. It is an int ...

ists that rescue

penguin Penguins (order (biology), order List of Sphenisciformes by population, Sphenisciformes , family (biology), family Spheniscidae ) are a group of Water bird, aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: on ...

s sometimes dress them in knitted sweaters to stop them from preening and thereby ingesting the

mineral oil Mineral oil is any of various colorless, odorless, light mixtures of higher alkanes from a mineral source, particularly a distillate of petroleum, as distinct from usually edible vegetable oils. The name 'mineral oil' by itself is imprecise, ...

, which is poisonous. Monkeys may also pick out nits from their fur or scratch their rears to keep themselves clean. Cats are well known for their extensive grooming. Cats groom so often that they often produce

hairball A hairball is a small collection of hair or fur formed in the stomach of animals, and uncommonly in humans, that is occasionally vomited up when it becomes too big. Hairballs are primarily a tight elongated cylinder of packed fur, but may inclu ...

s from the fur they ingest. Many mammal species also groom their genitals after

copulation Sexual intercourse (or coitus or copulation) is a sexual activity typically involving the insertion and thrusting of the penis into the vagina for sexual pleasure or reproduction.Sexual intercourse most commonly means penile–vaginal penetra ...

Grooming as a social activity

Many social animals adapt preening and grooming behaviors for other social purposes such as bonding and the strengthening of

social structure In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals. Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally rel ...

s. Grooming plays a particularly important role in forming social bonds in many primate species, such as

chacma baboon The chacma baboon (''Papio ursinus''), also known as the Cape baboon, is, like all other baboons, from the Old World monkey family. It is one of the largest of all monkeys. Located primarily in southern Africa, the chacma baboon has a wide vari ...

s and

wedge-capped capuchin The wedge-capped capuchin or Guianan weeper capuchin (''Cebus olivaceus'') is a capuchin monkey from South America. It is found in northern Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela. ''Cebus olivaceus'' is known to dwell in tall, primary forest and travel ove ...

Mutual grooming in human relationships

In humankind, mutual grooming relates closely to

social grooming Social grooming is a behavior in which social animals, including humans, clean or maintain one another's body or appearance. A related term, allogrooming, indicates social grooming between members of the same species. Grooming is a major soci ...

, which is defined as the process by which human beings fulfill one of their basic instincts, such as socializing, cooperating and learning from each other. In research conducted by Holly Nelson (from the

University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire (UNH) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Durham, New Hampshire. It was founded and incorporated in 1866 as a land grant college in Hanover in connection with Dartmouth College, m ...

) and Glenn Geher (

State University of New York The State University of New York (SUNY, , ) is a system of public colleges and universities in the State of New York. It is one of the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States. Led by c ...

at Paltz), individuals who chose their romantic partner reported more mutual grooming than others who focused in other types of relationships. Hence, this study hypothesized that mutual grooming related to relationship satisfaction, trust and previous experience of affection within the family. They claim that even though humans do not groom each other with the same fervor that other species do, they are groomers par excellence. Therefore, human mutual grooming plays an important role in

pair bond In biology, a pair bond is the strong affinity that develops in some species between a mating pair, often leading to the production and rearing of offspring and potentially a lifelong bond. Pair-bonding is a term coined in the 1940s that is freque ...

ing. In the same investigation, researchers found that individuals with more promiscuous attitudes and those who scored high on the anxiety sub-scale on an adult attachment style measure tend to groom their partners more frequently. These findings were also consistent with some of the functions of grooming: potential parental indicator, developing trust and courtship or flirtation. A recent empirical study by Seinenu Thein-Lemelson (

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

) utilized an

ethological Ethology is the scientific study of animal behaviour, usually with a focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Behaviourism as a term also describes the scientific and objective ...

approach to examine cross-cultural differences in human grooming as it pertains to caregiving behaviors. Naturalistic data was collected through video focal follows with children during routine activities and then coded for grooming behaviors. This cross-cultural comparison of urban families in Burma and the United States indicates that there are significant cross-cultural differences in rates of caregiver-to-child grooming. Burmese caregivers in the sample groomed children more often than caregivers in the United States. Additionally, children in the United States have short instances of concentrated grooming predominantly during daily activities that are structured explicitly around hygiene goals (bath time), in contrast to the Burmese child, whose grooming is distributed more evenly within and across daily activities. The Burmese parents maintained a constant vigilance with regard to risk of infection. The study is significant because it is the only study of human grooming to utilize naturalistic data.

Gallery

Image:Cat cleaning itself.jpg, A domesticated

cat The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of ...

grooming. Image:Cygnus atratus preening.jpg, Black swan preening. Image:preening.jpg, Peregrine falcon preening its feathers. File:Passer domesticus bathing in water, Anas platyrhynchos in background.ogv, A house sparrow cleans itself in moving water while a mallard preens in the background File:Sarcophaga carnaria (Portugal2005).ogg, A

flesh fly Sarcophagidae () are a family (biology), family of fly, flies commonly known as flesh flies. They differ from most flies in that they are Ovoviviparity, ovoviviparous, opportunistically depositing hatched or hatching maggots instead of eggs on c ...

uses its legs to clean and maintain itself

References

External links