Stop preconceived ideas! Humans do not have a monopoly on hygiene. Some animal species can sometimes even be cleaner than us…
« You dirty beast! » Who has never sworn like that? Literally, however, an animal is not so dirty. There are even some that break records for cleanliness. Take the cat. He sleeps a lot, but he also licks a lot: more than a third of his time grooming himself. And when Minou licks himself, it calms him down.
Rats, which symbolize filth and disease, are perhaps cleaner than cats, wash frequently and transmit fewer diseases than our beloved felines. If they scavenge, it’s to feed themselves. Besides, without them, our streets would be much dirtier.
Own cousins
He also has a sad reputation: the pig. And yet, he is surely the cleanest animal on the farm. If he rolls in the mud, it is to protect his sensitive skin. And he does his poop far from where he sleeps.
Chimpanzees are our closest cousins in the animal kingdom, and cleaner in some ways too. A study showed that their beds were more hygienic than our bacteria-filled ones. It is true that they make their bed every day. Chimpanzees, and many monkeys, also remove parasites from their conspecifics. It’s good for social bonds and group cohesion.
In Japan, a colony of macaques is famous for taking baths in a onsena hot thermal spring, and it lowers their levels of glucocorticoid, the stress hormone. The spa is relaxing, isn’t it?
His own skin
The gecko doesn’t like water. But the little lizard doesn’t need it: its skin is hydrophobic, which prevents it from serving as a refuge for microbes. The raccoon, as its name suggests, dips its food in water before eating it, less to wash it than to soften it.
Among the fish, there is the remora, which clings to the shark and delights in its parasites. It’s mutualism, everyone benefits. The dolphin does not need it. The parasites have a hard time clinging to its skin, so smooth and shiny, with roughness of the order of a nanometer (1 million millimeters…). The proper is not the proper of Man.
Question of the week
“Why is the horn of the rhino worth gold?”
Because it is attributed, quite wrongly, in China and Vietnam, to virtues against cancer and against impotence. Poaching has exploded in recent years, with nearly 3% of the population killed in Africa. To protect the rhinoceroses, we are experimenting with the infiltration into the horn of a tiny dose of radioactivity, harmless to the animal, but sufficient for its detection at customs controls. Another method, which has proven itself: we cut the two horns of the rhinoceroses. It’s painless; they are made of keratin, like our nails, and they grow back. Poaching has fallen by 80% in South Africa. Without horn, poachers are powerless.
