Physiologically, our body reacts to a kiss.  It takes 34 muscles in the face to get the lips going just so.  Blood rushes, the body warms, saliva is stimulated, testosterone levels rise, and those feel-good chemicals like endorphins and oxytocin are released in the brain.  At the same time, blood pressure goes up, and the heart beats faster, we burn more calories per minute than just sitting around.  Anthropologists speculate that kissing could have evolved from sniffing, rubbing noses together to get a scent in greeting each other as animals often do.  Others think that kissing evolved from a kind of feeding behavior, as with the birds.  In ancient Egypt, eating was referred to as “kissing one’s food.”  A German researcher found that 65% of people who kiss tilt their heads to the right.  The record for the longest-held kiss in the United States is almost 31 hours.  And the record for the “biggest kiss” was set at a music festival in England in 2007 where about 30,000 people kissed at the same time.

 

The Beloved