This is scientific Americans 60 second science. I'm Karen Hopkins. This will just take a minute.

Chimpanzies. They're notoriously social creatures. They snack together, snooze together, and work hard to keep each other flee and tick-free.

But this semi and intimacy does more than just spread the love.

It also helps to spread the bacteria that inhabit

their guts, which is a good thing. That's according to a new study in the

journal, Science Advances. When we think about the germs that get

swapped during social interactions, we tend to focus on the bad guys, the bugs that cause everything from

Ebola to the common cold. But could togetherness also promote the exchange of health-promoting

microbes, like those in the

intestine. To find out, researchers spent eight years scooping the poop from a

troop of 40 chimpanzees in Tanzania, and they analyzed the bacteria present in the samples.

What they found was that during the rainy season, when food is plentiful and the chimps are more chummy,

the apes Chim's increased microblode was not due to them all eating the same stuff.

In fact, the more time the animals spent together, the more varied they were in terms of how

much fruit they consumed.

The researchers say it's thus likely the hobnobbing chimps are indeed sharing the microbial wealth while they're

grooming or mating, nor when they're otherwise too busy to watch where they step.

Thanks for the minute. For Scientific Americans 60 Second Science, I'm Karen Hopkins.