How chimpanzees keep their beds cleaner than most humans
CHIMPANZEES’ beds are cleaner than those of humans because, unlike us, they change their “sheets” every night, a study has found.
The great apes build complex tree nests out of branches and leaves each day, which contain fewer body bacteria than beds in most human households.
By contrast, human beds are teeming with faecal, oral and skin bacteria, according to the investigation by North Carolina State University.
Compared with human beds, the chimp nests had a much greater variety of bugs. However, they were far less likely to harbour “dirty” faecal, oral or skin bacteria.
“We know that human homes are effectively their own ecosystems, and human beds often contain a subset of the taxa – or types – of organisms found in the home,” said Megan Thoemmes, who led the research in Tanzania.
“For example, about 35 per cent of bacteria in human beds stems from our bodies, including faecal, oral and skin bacteria. We wanted to know how this compares with some of our closest evolutionary relatives, the chimpanzees, which make their own beds daily.
“We found almost none of those microbes in the chimpanzee nests, which was a little surprising,” she said. The scientists were similarly surprised when they tried to vacuum up parasitic arthropods – fleas and lice – from the chimpanzee nests.
They expected to find hordes of the bloodsuckers, but collected no more than a handful.
Ms Thoemmes said: “There were only four ectoparasites found, across all the nests we looked at. And that’s four individual specimens, not four different species.”
She added: “This work really highlights the role that man-made structures play in shaping the ecosystems of our immediate environment. In some ways, our attempts to create a clean environment for ourselves may actually make our surroundings less ideal.”
Published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the study is the first to compare the composition of items found in contemporary human homes to that of other structures built by mammals, including those of nonhuman primates.