Humans are Filthier than Chimpanzees

And nowhere is that more evident than in where they sleep, according to new research.

Publishing their findings in the journal Royal Society Open Science, researchers took swab samples from a chimpanzee nest and compared them with swabs taken from a human’s bed.

In both settings, researchers found traces of sweat, saliva, feces and skin. However, the team found significantly more of those “impurities” in the human bed (35 percent) than the chimpanzee nest (3.5 percent).

“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. For example, about 35 percent of bacteria in human beds stem from our own bodies, including fecal, oral and skin bacteria” said Megan Thoemmes, lead author and Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University.

Researchers conclude that the reason for such a disparity in cleanliness has to do with chimpanzees sleeping in a new bed nearly every night while humans are apt to keep the same bed for decades, shedding these “impurities” night after night.

“We have created sleeping places in which our exposure to soil and other environmental microbes has all but disappeared, and we are instead surrounded by less diverse microbes that are primarily sourced from our own bodies,” the authors wrote in the study.

This finding is less likely to surprise you if you’ve ever lived in a communal setting (let’s say a dorm). That was where I discovered that people have varying definitions of hygiene and that people will do just about anything on a bed when space is limited (i.e., eating, studying, using it as a napkin after eating, or as seating when entertaining hordes of strangers).