Gruter Fellows’ Publications Garner National Media Attention
Recently, with the generous support of Gordon Getty, the Gruter Institute held two conferences on the Evolution of Kissing, the first at the Royal Society in London (March 2024) and the second in San Francisco (March 2025). The conferences provided an interdisciplinary examination of the role of kissing and social contact from a scientific perspective. Papers from the conferences are published […]
Gruter Fellow Owen Jones’s Upcoming Book Force of Nature Available of Preorder
New from Gruter Institute Fellow, Owen D. Jones, Professor of Law & Professor of Biology at Vanderbilt University, Force of Nature is an eye-opening exploration of natural selection’s power and how it can help human society flourish. Available wherever you buy books. (For reviews and praise – from best-selling authors Steven Pinker and Robert Sapolsky, and […]
KissCon II: The Evolution of Kissing and Adaptive Trade-Offs in Human Contact: Perspectives in Evolutionary Biology, Immunology, Human Behavior, and Implications for the Increasingly Isolated Digital Age
In March 2024, with the generous support of Gordon Getty, the Gruter Institute convened a group of evolutionary biologists, behavioral scientists, historians, economists, and legal thought leaders for “KissCon,” the first known interdisciplinary examination of the role of kissing and social contact from a scientific perspective. Convened at the Royal Society in London, KissCon examined the history […]
The First Kiss …? The Evidence From Ancient Mesopotamia
An exploration of the earliest documentation for romantic-sexual kissing.
Social Touch in Chimpanzee Life
Learn why social touch is at the core of social interaction in chimpanzees
Contact, Disgust, and The Law
What role does disgust play in the evolution of kissing behavior in humans?
I Know That Face! Chimpanzees and Gorillas Can Spontaneously Differentiate Photos of People They Know from Those of Unfamiliar People
Lydia Hopper, Director of Behavioral Management, Research Animal Resources, Johns Hopkins University Flipping through photos on your phone, your eye will likely be drawn to those of your friends and family. And being able to quickly differentiate people you know from strangers is an important component of how we navigate our daily lives, from maintaining […]
User Innovation: A Novel Framework for Studying Animal Innovation Within a Comparative Context
Animal innovation follows a similar process to human user innovation