BrainStuff Classics: Why Do We Have Eyebrows?

What are eyebrows really good for, evolutionarily speaking -- and what would we look like if we hadn't developed them? Learn about eyebrows, sweat, and nonverbal communication in this classic episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff. Lauren bog Obam here with a classic episode
from our erstwhile host, Christian Sagar. This is what I've
been thinking about because of all the time I've been
spending when I am out in public interacting with people
who are wearing a covering over the lower half of
their face. The question of the day is why do

(00:22):
we have eyebrows? Hey, brain stuff? It's Christian Saga, and
I'm here to tell you why human beings have eyebrows,
because look at them. Take clus look, go over to
the mirror. Look, aren't they just ridiculous? I mean, they're
also very well manicured, but they're also ridiculous. Now, scientists

(00:44):
aren't entirely sure why we have this hair, but they
have a pretty good guess. The arch shape of the
eyebrow diverts rain or sweat around to the sides of
our face, keeping our eyes relatively dry, and the most
obvious advantage of this is that it allows us to
see clearly even when we're sweating a lot. Diverting the

(01:07):
sweat away is also good because the salt in sweat
irritates our eyes. But just to test things. I shook
a salt shaker into my eye and take it from me.
It burns like hell fire. Eyebrows are a very significant
aspect of our appearance. They are one of the most
distinctive features that make up our faces, and we pay

(01:30):
a lot of attention to them and look. Eyebrows are
also one of the most expressive facial features. One of
the clearest ways we're telling somebody what we're thinking is
to simply move our eyebrows up and down. But what
if we didn't have eyebrows. Scientists have thought about this
as well, and they think that if we didn't have eyebrows,

(01:52):
we would have gotten instead these long snuffle luck bagus
style eyelashes, as well as far protruding foreheads, which could
have been kind of useful because we could put things
up there I don't know, like like our keys, but
rain or sweat would then drop from that ledge on
our face straight away down onto the rest of our

(02:15):
face without getting into our eyes. So all right, way
to go, evolution for not making us look like that.
Today's episode was written by someone I could not figure
out who, but it was produced by Tyler Clang. For
more on this and lots of other topics. Is it
how stuff works dot com brain Stuff is production of

(02:36):
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