Social grooming

In social animals, including humans, social grooming is an activity in which individuals in a group clean or maintain one another's body or appearance. A related term, allogrooming, indicates social grooming between members of the same species. Grooming is a major social activity, and a means by which animals who live in proximity may bond and reinforce social structures, family links, and build relationships. Social grooming also is used as a form of reconciliation and a means of conflict resolution in some species. Mutual grooming typically describes the act of grooming between two individuals, often as a part of social grooming, pair bonding, or a precoital activity.

It is a reuse of ordinary grooming behavior, a means of achieving hygiene and good health, in that an animal helping another animal to clean itself also is helping to form a social bond and trust between them.

In non-human animals

Mutual grooming in ponies

Mutual grooming in ponies

Three macaques grooming one another near Lonavla, India