Nature is a Brilliant Engineer

Short Answer - Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc are all examples of virtual 'grooming'.

Most mammals only scratch with the back foot, but a monkey or ape can use either back of front. Its front limbs are ideally suited to the cleaning tasks. The nimble fingers can run through the fur and locate specific trouble spots with great accuracy. Compared with claws and hooves,the primate's hands are precision `cleaners'. Even so, two hands are better than one, and this creates something of a problem. The monkey or ape can manage to bring both its hands into play when dealing with its legs, flanks, or front, but cannot really get to grips efficiently in this way with its back, or the arms themselves. Also, lacking a mirror, it cannot see what it is doing when it is concentrating on the head region. Here, it can use both hands, but it must work blind. Obviously, the head, back and arms are going to be less beautifully groomed than the front, sides and legs, unless something special can be done for them.

The solution is social 'grooming', the development of a friendly mutual aid system. This can be seen in a wide range of both bird and mammal species, but it reaches a peak of expression amongst the higher primates.

In other words, social grooming is a co-operative, non-aggressive activity.

If two animals wish to tighten their bond of friendship, they can do so by repeatedly grooming one another, even if the condition of their fur hardly warrants it. Indeed, there seems to be little relationship between the amount of dirt on the coat, and the amount of mutual grooming that takes place. Social grooming activities appear to have become almost independent of their original stimuli. Although they still have the vital task of keeping the fur clean, their motivation now appears to be more social than cosmetic. By enabling two animals to stay close together in a non-aggressive, co-operative mood they help to tie tighter the inter-personal bonds between the individuals in the troop or colony.

Equate that to human activities - we are simply behaving very much as our compelling urges and genes have molded us to be. There's no escape from it - we are simply Naked Apes, acting on our basic instincts, no matter where today's technology takes us.

And the point of this dissertation?

To figure out where Social Networking is next headed, or to develop the next 'internet sensation' - spend a week taking notes in the primate house of your local zoo.

Mike Francis 'Nature is a Brilliant Engineer'