Merry Christmas…we think

Deck the halls with boughs of holly, Fa la la la la, la la la la. Tis the season to be jolly, etc etc. Yes, it’s rapidly approaching…the crackers are in, the party poppers are primed and the presents are being wrapped. And we on the Science Lite desk are as excited as a flower about to bloom. You see, other than being jolly, t’is also the season for our favourite science lite column – the Chrimbo edition! Over the years we have covered many a yuletide theme – from the chemistry of Christmas dinner to the physics of Santa. Every year the Editor begrudgingly gives in to our incessant seasonal jollity and finds us something festive to tackle. No different this year…or so we assumed. “Kissing” came the rather stern request from Ed. “Kissing… and penguins”. Ok we thought, slightly obscure, but we can put some tinsel on those. Up first – kissing. And what a strange behaviour it is; thought to have developed from the trait of our ancestors to give offspring food via mouth-to-mouth regurgitation. Even the most passionate – the most human ­– of kisses, the French kiss, has clear evolutionary origins. It has been suggested that ‘kiss-feeding’ – where the tongue is used to push food from the mouth of the mother to the child – is the obvious candidate. But we digress…regurgitation, in any form, is hardly fodder for a jolly seasonal column. Mistletoe however…now you are talking. What could be more festive than a cheeky glint in the eye and stealthily held sprig of mistletoe? We pitch the idea to the Editor. Not quite ‘what he had in mind’ apparently. No, bacteria are more up his festive street. Fine. But we simply refuse to lose our jovial edge. It’ll come as no real surprise to you dear readers that if you are lucky/naughty/drunk (delete as appropriate) enough to find your self attached at the lips under said mistletoe at this year’s xmas do it won’t be just awkward glances the next morning that you’ll be exchanging. No, the odd bacterium will have taken the opportunity to broaden its horizons and do some inter-mouth travelling. We say the ‘odd bacteria’, but that is to do it no justice at all. A recent study suggests that for every 10 second kiss – as many as 80 million bacteria can be transferred from mouth to mouth. The study, published in Microbiome, also found that if couples intimately kiss regularly then their salivary microbiota populations become very similar. The researchers, from the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, studied 21 couples asking them to fill out questionnaires and taking oral swabs to examine microbiota. As an interesting sidenote, the researchers point out that 74% of the men reported a higher intimate kiss frequency than the women of the same couple. No real surprise that the tendency of the male human to brag and exaggerate extends to scientific studies. So 'salivary microbiota’ and ‘oral swabs’ – that’s festive, right? RIGHT? Come on everyone, stay with us, we can get through this if we just keep the cheer going. Now, penguins – surely these little snow dwelling tufts of fluffy loveliness won’t let us down? As the Editor handed us our brief, all still looked hopeful. It was a paper from Polar Biology – surely the most festive of all journals?  Upon reading the title of the paper however, our seasonal glee began to waver. There is no real way to dress this up – no amount of tinsel will gild the edges of this, so we are afraid you’ll have to take it as it is. Multiple occurrences of king penguin sexual harassment by Antarctic fur seals…Fa la la la la, la la la la. Yes, it does appear as if some amorous seals have rather been taking liberties with their Antarctic neighbours.  Study leaders, Nico de Bruyn, and William A. Haddad of the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria, South Africa confess a befuddlement as to why this might be happening. "If this is learned behaviour, we really can’t think of what the reward may be for these young males, other than perhaps learning that these birds are an easier target to practice their copulatory skills." That’s it, we give in. All festive cheer is now extinguished… merry Christmas everyone, may all your oral microbiota be jolly and all your penguins be safe from enamoured seals.