A common activity among primates is mutual grooming. Through visiting zoos, or watching conservation videos, we are all familiar with this activity. One individual seeks out another, then sits patiently while the ‘groomer’ carefully sorts through the coat of the ‘groomee’. These roles may then be reversed. We modern humans usually interpret the activity as the searching for and removal of external parasites and their eggs, perhaps also seeds and other debris, and dismiss it as primitive and unnecessary (- unless our children acquire lice at school!).

However, mutual grooming is more than reciprocal coat cleaning and is important in creating and maintaining social bonds between the members of a primate group. But, of course, Homo sapiens has evolved more efficient means of forging social contacts – through speech, writing, the arts and so on. We have left all that animal stuff behind. Or have we?

Observe your fellow humans on a bus or train, in a waiting room or restaurant, even walking on a city street. Watch how they use their ‘smart’ phones. Suddenly, our long-established primate urge to investigate an object with the fingers, move and part hairs searching for minutiae, has been rediscovered. The stance, finger movements and the intensity of concentration are identical to those employed by our primate relatives in mutual grooming. And what is the primary purpose of this E-grooming? To ensure we are still in the tribe, in the know, still respected and listened to. Those versatile, sensitive, manipulable fingers which we have inherited from the early primates still have valuable work to do.