Whatever you call them, not many people actually like their own.
But why do they stick out like that?
Why are they made of that bendy cartilage tissue and not bone?
And why do you always get a spot on the end of it
right before a job interview?
Our lives would be very different
if instead of noses we just had two wee holes on the front of our face.
I mean why do you think Voldemort was always so raging?
My life is terrible.
Like loads of our external organs, noses evolved to help us eat
and therefore live.
Our nose is close to our mouth with downward pointing nostrils
so even at the very last minute
we can smell if something has gone rotten.
Noses even help us eat when we're too young to nip to the shops ourselves
by making sure we don't suffocate while being breastfed.
That little air gap created by your nose pushing up against the breast
coupled with the fact that the larynx sits much higher when you're a baby
means that you can eat and breathe at the same time.
The external nose is mainly made up of a springy cartilage
and it's a good job too.
They take quite a bit of a bashing throughout our lives
so it makes a lot of sense that they're softer
and less likely to splinter and shatter.
While our jutting noses are in prime position to take a battering,
the position is also helpful for keeping rainwater or sweat
from flowing straight into our nostrils.
Not all creatures are so design savvy.
The Myanmar snub-nosed monkey has an upward pointing nose
and is nicknamed the sneezing monkey
because every time it rains monkey goes atishoo!
Sounds cute, but when you're trying to live your best camouflaged life
a sneeze isn't the best way to stay concealed from predators.
So your nose probably isn't as unfortunately shaped
as the snub-nosed monkey,
but what if you're not happy with it?
Rhinoplasty, or a nose job to the rest of us,
is the most common plastic surgery carried out anywhere
and it's nothing new.
Rhinoplasty first became popular during the mass syphilis outbreak
in 16th Century Europe,
as one of the unfortunate symptoms of advanced syphilis
is the loss of soft tissue and therefore your nose.
A nose job then was as much fun as the disease.
Surgeons would cut a flap in the arm,
attach it to where your nose once was
and once it fuses with your face
sever your arm free and mould what's left
into something resembling a nose.
Now push the thought of arm flaps from your mind
and think instead about lovely, warm weather.
Our environment has influenced the way our noses evolve too.
In warmer climates there is less need to warm the air up
on the way into the lungs
so the immediate flow of air straight into the lungs is preferable
resulting in shorter, flatter noses.
In colder climates, you're more likely to find long, thin noses
that are better at heating and humidifying cold air
before it gets to the lungs.
As well as being damned cute,
dogs are said to have one of the best senses of smell going.
According to a recent study carried out in Florida,
specially trained dogs had an almost 97% accuracy
in sniffing out cancer in blood samples.
But our own sense of smell certainly isn't to be sniffed at -
humans are better than dogs
at identifying the smell of some ripe fruits
simply because it's a more valuable trait to us.
And if you wonder why the smell of ripe fruit takes you right back
to your 2008 Benidorm weekender featuring too many mango daiquiris,
it's because of odour memory -
a rather unique ability that we possess
because the part of our brain that deals with our sense of smell
is right next to the hippocampus, the area where memories are formed.
Saving us from suffocation and salmonella,
sneezing and freezing,
it's safe to say we owe a whole lot
to our pointy, flat, wide, button, bumpy noses.
Even if it is where all the bogeys live.