why-animals-do-the-thing:

kaijutegu:

calleo:

weeaboo-chan:

plum-soup:

screamingelf:

talesfrominceland:

and they wonder why no one likes them

isn’t showing teeth a display of aggression in primates?

yeah it is

Depending on the social context and the rest of the body language involved, showing teeth can be either aggression or submission both in primates and in most species of canines.

Aggressive chimpanzees:

Hard gaze, mouth all the way open, usually accompanied by screeching

Submissive chimpanzees: 

Lower lip drooped, often accompanied by shrinking posture and extended arms

Eyes downcast, arm out, palm up- mouth open, but gaze isn’t head-on

With chimps, it’s always super contextual- but teeth don’t just mean one thing! You gotta take allllll the body language into account.

I was just waiting for @kaijutegu to jump in on this. 

We talk a lot about looking at lip and facial tension around open-mouthed behaviors to determine emotional context with dogs on this blog, and we’ve touched on it with other species. Here’s another good example – look at how different the tension is in the first chimp’s lips and face than in the last photo. In the former photo, all the skin around the mouth is pulled back taught and tight; in the latter, the lips are drawn back but there’s not nearly as much that’s ‘hard’ about the mouth. 

(As to the top part of the post, well, that’s a question for @why-human-do-the-thing next April Fools. Not gonna touch it on this blog).