Scratching is contagious among strangers – if you are an orangutan

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Orangutans scratch themselves as soon as they watch others live it

Manoj Shah/Getty

Amongst orangutans, scratching is contagious – very finest as yawning is among humans. When an orangutan sees one other scratch, they in total start scratching themselves.

On the other hand, the behaviour differs from contagious yawning in a single essential appreciate. Humans steal yawns more readily from shut family and chums, but the orangutans had been more seemingly to steal scratching if they did no longer know the a good deal of orangutan properly.

“I became doubting the implications on the initiating put aside, but after checking every part it perceived to genuinely be there,” says Daan Laméris on the University of Antwerp in Belgium.

Whereas …

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