I know the title is poorly worded but I can’t really think of how exactly to word the question.

I was watching a cat try to find a place to sit that wasn’t covered in snow and it made me think about how humans wipe off snow covered seats or just dirty seats in general.

Is that a uniquely human thing or are there other animals that exhibit similar behaviors?

  • Mothra
    6·
    5 months ago

    Depends on how you define cleaning or wiping. Few animals can actually wipe stuff, but some exhibit cleaning of one sort or another. I’m going to remove self-cleaning and grooming out of the list. You mean cleaning objects or their environment.

    The already mentioned raccoon is one example but with food only. If you accept that, then Ibises have also been seen washing toxic frogs before eating them to remove the skin toxins.

    I’m half hearted about the bird of paradise example, since that’s a mating visual display only… But hey, many birds actually clean the interior of their nests. They pick up their chicks droppings and toss them out. It’s not wiping or brushing but it surely is cleaning for the sake of hygiene.

    Spiders remove debris from their webs, does that count?

    I’ve never seen cats or dogs brush or wipe stuff away either. Cats may toss or brush away things out of boredom, curiosity or simply to reach whatever is underneath provided it’s a few particles and not really digging.

    For cleaning like humans do, my money would be on the monkeys though, personally, I haven’t seen or heard much about that happening spontaneously in wild or feral monkeys.