A lot of people kiss their pets or non-human animals in general. I find that very weird. I understand that it is a sign of affection but it seems so off. One reason is that I doubt whether animals really understand this. Also it seems to be on a level of intimacy to me that I find weird sharing with a pet. Not necessarily romantically or sexually (that would be even more weird and wrong and probably illegal). But it is still “more”. I am not sure whether I can really explain why exactly I find that weird.

Anyway, what is something that is weird to you but not to most other people?

  • Noxy@pawb.socialEnglish
    3·
    7 days ago

    cuddling with my dog right now as I read this. I just gave him a bunch of kisses on his face, and now he’s cuddled up to me even more. He knows what’s up. The oxytocin flows.

  • Agent641@lemmy.world
    2·
    7 days ago

    Dancing. Especially freestyle solo dancing like at a club or whatever.

    From an objective perspective, it’s very odd.

    I get that a lot of people enjoy it, and there are some very skilled couples dances which I get more, but the sort of thing you get at a club or concert is just - strange to me.

  • Doublenut@lemmy.zip
    1·
    7 days ago

    I will say anecdotally, my wife has aggressively kissed my dog since she was a puppy. The dog aldo knows we don’t like face licks and will boop my wife on the cheek with her nose repeatedly.

    And to answer your question, people are into what they’re into, I just don’t get feet.

  • tomiant@piefed.socialEnglish
    1·
    7 days ago

    You can’t help it when an animal snuggles you! You just can’t deny them the love!! 💖

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    1·
    7 days ago

    Animals do lots of physical behaviors to each other, like grooming for fleas or ticks, that seem weird to us, but probably signify affection and closeness to them. They probably don’t just let any old random monkey start picking through their fur, any more than we’d allow some stranger to hold our hand on the subway.

    Animals show lots of affection to each other, and they show affection to us. Of course they recognize when we do stuff that shows affection to them. They’d rather have tummy skritches, but they’ll sit still for some kisses.

  • atomicorange@lemmy.world
    80·
    8 days ago

    I kiss my parrot because it is a cultural ritual we have built together. I make smoochy noises at him and he mimics them back to me because he wants to communicate. I kiss his little beak and he supposes this is a thing I must like doing so he starts doing it back. It makes me smile and make happy noises, which he recognizes. Now we have a fun thing we do that means we’re buddies. He trains me to offer up my nose for him to smooch if he makes a specific little whispery sound. His only reward is the opportunity to boop me on the nose with his beak but he evidently finds this incredibly amusing and will occasionally whisper at me relentlessly until I give in. He will let me smooch the back of his head at nighttime because it means he gets to stay up later. His feathers are soft and he smells nice so I like it too.

    • newtraditionalists@kbin.melroy.org
      7·
      8 days ago

      I want to echo what Velma said…I recently received an incredibly painful text from my older brother, but your example of how animals love other animals, really grounds me. Im tearing up, but in relief, in awe, and in utter joy. This little anecdote is a great gift. Thanks for sharing!

    • unitedwithme@lemmy.today
      5·
      8 days ago

      Oo what kind of parrot? And what country do you guys love birds that much? I want to visit 😁 we have 2, ourselves.

      • atomicorange@lemmy.world
        4·
        8 days ago

        He’s a green cheeked conure. I also have an African Grey who doesn’t like to be smooched. What kind do you have?

        • unitedwithme@lemmy.today
          2·
          8 days ago

          Aww I love Greys!! They’re so smart and have such a wide vocabulary.

          We sort of happened upon them from a couple who needed to surrender, but a Blue Fronted Amazon and more recently, a Goffin’s Cockatoo.

          • atomicorange@lemmy.world
            2·
            8 days ago

            My Grey is kind of a dummy (or maybe just too smart to perform for my approval) but I love her anyway. She’s the sweetest and loves just hanging out on my shoulder.

            I had a Blue Fronted years ago, he was the best boy ever. He was an amazing singer and mimic and loved to cuddle. Thanks for taking in birds that need homes!!

    • Janx@piefed.socialEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      Beautiful. I hope you post a video of your parrot doing the smoochie noises because that’s just perfect…

    • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.worldEnglish
      196·
      9 days ago

      sports

      And when you tell them how watching (typically) men get sweaty, musky, dirty and aggressive, chasing a ball (or rubbing their half-naked bodies together with one another), how that has some ‘similarities’ to gay porn, how they get really defensive and insecure.

      ‘N-no, you got it all wrong, I’m not gay! I just like watching athletic men get rough with one another, all pent up, sweaty, needy… I mean uh… Oh yeah, sports! It’s so un-gay, it’s like, looping around itself, with ungayness!’

      ‘So it’s like canceling the un part out?’

      ‘Exactly! Wait a minute…’

      • CombatWombat@feddit.onlineEnglish
        181·
        9 days ago

        I really enjoy watching men’s sports with straight men for exactly this reason. We’ll sit around and they’ll talk about how such and such a man spent so much time in the weight room, and he’s been putting on muscle, and he’s low to the ground and explosive, and it’s like, dude you are clearly talking about how bro is caked up from doing squats all offseason, how do you not realize how extremely homoerotic this whole discussion is? I find it cute how flummoxed they get about it when you say something about how the player’s looking cute in those shorts or whatever, but it’s also fun to head down to the women’s sports bars and see the lesbians get all flustered about the women’s sports teams. It’s very different because the women’s sports fans are generally much more willing to be open and honest about how such and such player is so cute or hot or however, and it’s less… lecherous? objectifying? than the men’s fans. It’s a pretty stark cultural difference that enjoy seeing in different fandoms.

      • breezeblock@lemmy.ca
        12·
        9 days ago

        Team sports is an expression of latent tribalism in many of us. Might be why you don’t see it.

        And most fans of a sport have played it in their youth, so there’s unexpressed longing for lost youth.

        It starts as something socialized with your male role models, spreads to your peers at school — and eventually is just another ritual that you can find comfort in via its seasonal predictability — there’s always another game to be played.

        Grid iron football is indeed rather homoerotic, but … let’s say ice hockey?

        • teslekova@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          7 days ago

          Plenty of gay men playing these big, manly, homoerotic sports, and having a grand time!

          Most of em are just a little quiet about it, for obvious gay panic reasons. That’s less of a problem as time goes on, but still.

        • CombatWombat@feddit.onlineEnglish
          5·
          9 days ago

          Those ice hockey girlies in the pwhl be kissing on each other and getting married there’s no way you can convince me it isn’t homoerotic.

      • papalonian@lemmy.world
        7·
        8 days ago

        Don’t like sports but have never been a fan of this take. It feels indirectly homophobic (in that you’re saying something that you know is not sexual in nature is gay because you know the other person will view it as a negative or bad thing) and would probably not be taken as much of a joke if it were, say, a gay man watching women’s volleyball and their straight friends harassing him about actually being straight.

        Just my two cents, I’m sure it’s fine in the right circles.

        • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          8 days ago

          I mean, I guess I can see that, but uh… leans over, whispering being forced on a field during phys ed with a bunch of other teenage guys who’s hormones are also raging can, shall we say, awaken things.

          So it’s not a ‘haha, gay’ but a ‘😏 gay’ nudge at others, who are themselves usually - in my experience - either at the end of the spectrum: neutral to the thought, or deeply in denial.

          The games make no sense to me - what’s the point, ya know? But if I know that I feel a certain way about a guy’s bulge or body, I know I’m 110% not the only one. Voicing the truth can be amusing :3

      • nymnympseudonym@piefed.socialEnglish
        74·
        9 days ago

        For me it’s the utter pointless of it. Can this collection of humans push the ball past the other collection of humans? About as relevant as which mouse gets a bit of cheese. Why would I watch or care about the outcome, much less less the second-by-second details of how it came to be?

        Wow, that guy throws a ball really really well. Huh, whaddyaknow.

        • aMockTie@piefed.worldEnglish
          171·
          9 days ago

          To be fair, the same could be said of all games.

          • Which human happens to receive the best collection of dice rolls?
          • Which human happens to benefit the most from the shuffled arrangement of cards?
          • Which human can move their pieces better than their opponent(s)?
          • Which human(s) can push buttons better than the competing human(s)?

          I hope you’ve had fun playing a game before, and if so, can at least imagine that it would be interesting to watch top level players of that game accomplish what you couldn’t.

          The biggest difference I see with sports is the level of obsession over the game and the assumption that every masculine presenting person shares that obsession.

        • CombatWombat@feddit.onlineEnglish
          7·
          9 days ago

          I think that’s one of my favorite aspects. As I’ve gotten older, it’s hard to find low-stakes social encounters to hang out with my friends. The local women’s soccer team is doing well in the champions league is a good excuse to head out to sit in the summer sun on a wednesday night by the sound.

        • chunes@lemmy.world
          6·
          9 days ago

          But my collection of humans hails from a point geographically closer to me than the other collection of humans!

    • kubok@fedia.io
      131·
      8 days ago
      • sports

      Partly agreed. I find competitive sports and its fanbase very strange. However, doing sports for the sake of doing sports or for the sake of keeping some physical or mental health feels more natural to me.

      • Sharkticon@lemmy.zip
        5·
        8 days ago

        How often I tell people I’m not religious I’m a sports fan. They fill the same niche. People like tradition. People like ceremony. People like community. Some people like being able to you know sit in front of a pedophile and have him preach them for a while. I prefer to sit in front of a person hardlining multiple drugs and watch him put a ball through a hoop. Different Strokes for different folks.

        • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
          1·
          8 days ago

          I prefer to sit in front of a person hardlining multiple drugs and watch him put a ball through a hoop.

          Ooh, kinky!

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
      4·
      8 days ago

      MMA/ufc the SHOWS fans, turns out the audience can be as conservatives as the fighters, owners themselves, not surprising its all about psychopaths trying to hurt each other.

    • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      7 days ago

      Sports are fine for like kids’ recreation, but the trillions that are spent on the pro sports industry could go to something better.

    • DreamButt@lemmy.worldEnglish
      181·
      9 days ago

      This is something I especially notice at airports. Depending on which state I’m in the ratio of men washing their hands changes drastically

    • Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world
      181·
      9 days ago

      I apply the George Carlin process to hand washing. After all when in public I know where my dick has been but that janky faucet and restroom door knob has been touched by every wet handed dipshit who put their hands through the germ infested air dryer in the place.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
      12·
      8 days ago

      I’m in a building with multiple offices for multiple companies and one of them has a massage place.

      Each floor has one set of shared bathrooms for men and women

      The masseuse guy goes to the bathroom and I’ve noticed him there multiple times taking a dump, then walking out without washing his hands

      And he then massages people all over…

  • Chozo@fedia.io
    58·
    9 days ago

    One reason is that I doubt whether animals really understand this.

    Cats and dogs (as well as lots of other animals often kept as pets) both tend to lick at those they feel affection toward. Grooming behaviors from animals are typically signs of trust, affection, or shows that they look after you and are trying to protect you.

    I figure that most pets very much understand what getting kissed by their human means.

    • DreamButt@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      9 days ago

      Evolving cross species social skills is a positive survival trait. It’s not only easy to show that pets understand a lot of what we do but has been deeply studied

  • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.caEnglish
    40·
    8 days ago

    One reason is that I doubt whether animals really understand this

    You would be objectively wrong on that. It’s been shown that affection to animals fires off the same parts of the brain in them as it does in humans, and delivers the same chemicals.

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6826447/

    Just because animals can’t communicate like you or me (though I firmly believe pets have a language that you can understand if you own one long enough), it doesn’t mean they don’t have the same feelings of bonding and closeness. Biologically we’re all very similar, so the Oxytocin that we get from being loved is identical to the oxytocin that THEY get when being loved.

    • RebekahWSD@lemmy.world
      13·
      8 days ago

      Every cat I’ve ever met has a nice little language. It was always possible to tell when they were happy or annoyed at the very least. I love them. I always hope they know I love them.

    • Zacryon@feddit.orgOP
      5·
      8 days ago

      Thank you for the link. Does the paper reveal anything about kissing specifically? Haven’t had the time to read it yet.
      I know that humans and other animals can feel affection for each other and that physical contact, e.g., by stroking, induces a sensation of ‘affective touch’ facilitated by C-tactile fibers. So while kissing itself might induce similar effects by similar pressure force and temperature, I wonder whether it really makes a difference to ‘poking’ your pet with your finger in a similar way. In other words: if the physical sensation is similar, does another animal understand a kiss versus another form of affective touch?

      • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.caEnglish
        15·
        8 days ago

        Dogs have the ability to read body language. So a gentle behaviour like kissing or cuddling would definitely be perceived differently than an abrupt gesture like poking them.

  • aramis87@fedia.io
    32·
    9 days ago

    I doubt whether animals really understand this.

    Not in the way you’re thinking of (“my human loves me!”), but they almost certainly understand it as a form of scent-marking (“we are tribe-family”), which is a pretty similar concept.

    it seems to be on a level of intimacy to me that I find weird sharing with a pet.

    Have you had (m)any pets?

    • CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world
      25·
      8 days ago

      Idk about all pets but dogs absolutely understand it’s a form of affection, they kiss each other too, they’ve been with humans tens of thousands of years… they get it

  • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
    262·
    8 days ago

    Caring about sports. Like they devote what amounts to a part time job watching grown men compete in children’s games. Watching Competitive exercise while they melt into a couch pounding junk food. Watching other people talk about how well they exercised. Discussing daily with their friends and family and coworkers… All about one group of people in a colored shirt moving a ball slightly better than people with a different colored shirt.

    • blady_blah@lemmy.world
      101·
      7 days ago

      When I realized that guys typically need an activity to bond together, sports start to make a lot more sense. Sports are just a catalyst to male friendship. Yeah guys take the sports way too far, but it makes it more fun if there’s an emotional high or low when they watch it.