If the point is to transfer saliva into a female's mouth, wouldn't drooling be far more efficient, and therefore selected? (I always wondered why the girls in high school preferred the football players to us nerds....) This is simply "Just So Stories", Volume II. And my apologies, Gina, but in the realm of evolution nothing is supposed to be gross and disgusting except that social conventions make it so.

On the other hand, it's a good argument for abstinence (until immunity is built up :P).

You know, doesn't this sound suspiciously like a "Just So Story?" They are obviously starting with the(unproven and unprovable) assumption that kissing must have a survival benefit and then grabing a random beneficial side effect to say , "see, that proves we are right". It is not clear that every activity has a survival benefit, not even from an evolutionists point of view. A random chunk of ice might pick up a grain of dirt flowing down before it breaks from a glacier. And that would have no relevance to whether it breaks which is caused by heat, or whether it falls which is caused by gravity, or whether a hapless sherpa is in danger which is caused by kinetic energy. Or again what effort said hapless sherpa takes to avoid said glacier which is caused by the weighing of self-preservation and pack-instinct(duty to the team). And which action reflects(depending on one's world view) either the biological clash of instincts alone or the fact that the hapless sherpa has these things as well as a more sublime connection to the next world like all humans. Which leads him to judge in favor of pack-instinct in this case and push the stupid English climber out of the way. But in all these calculations the random speck of dirt in the chunk of ice is irrelevant. Likewise, if we are going to accept evolution should we not also accept that some biological traits are random specks of dirt? Why does there have to be a reason, to speak of?

I wonder how many dates these people got?