For many weeks now, social interactions have been prohibited in many countries, which has affected many people. Roman Wittig of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, has been looking into the effects of social contacts on the health of chimpanzees, and some of his findings apply equally to humans. In this interview, he explains why he prefers to speak in terms of "spatial” rather than “social” distancing, and how virtual (online) meetings can replace real meetings to a certain extent.