Face touching in primates: a closer look.

Dimond and Harries (Neuropsychologia 22, 227-233, 1984) claim that monkeys, unlike great apes and humans, rarely touch their faces. These authors reported the existence of a left-hand preference for face touching in great apes and humans. Using two species of macaques, we found an incidence of face touching by monkeys which was much higher than that reported by Dimond and Harries. Moreover, a re-analysis of their data failed to show any evidence for species differences in lateralization of face touching by primates.