Chimpanzees tend to pee when others in their group do, in a phenomenon scientists have dubbed “contagious urination.”
Because groups of people often go to the bathroom together too, and chimpanzees are our’ closest living relatives, this social behavior could be traced back to our common ancestor, researchers said.
Would not this be fairly obviously the case, many animals scent mark their territory using urine. It would make sense in social animals for boundary marking in an individual to trigger a complementary action from the wider group to reinforce the signal left.
Not obvious I think, because a lot of territory marking in canids & felines is extremely specific in location & around the entire territory they want to mark, where others/competitors would smell it. A group of chimpanzees all peeing close together kind of clusters it, wouldn’t it be more effective if the distribute the activity so it’s spread out more?
They’re just helping my guy overcome his shy bladder…you’d have issues too with 7 nat geo photographers taking pics of u pissing.