- If you had to choose between your eyeballs
or your eyebrows, which would you keep?
My guess is most people are saying
they would keep their eyeballs, obviously.
Eyebrows are just this weird forehead mustache
that we all have.
But what if I told you that eyebrows are way more important
than you might think?
Take a look at these photos of celebrities
with their eyes removed and try to name who they are
as quickly as possible.
Here are the answers for those still wondering or unsure.
Now do the same thing with these photos
of celebrities missing their eyebrows.
Besides all these pictures being absolutely weird
and hilarious and uncanny, studies have shown
that people have a significantly harder time
on average recognizing faces without eyebrows
compared to those that are missing eyeballs.
(record scratching)
Okay, I (laughs) immediately feel insane.
I will keep this on for a very brief moment
because I know how unsettling it is,
not only for you but for me,
and I'm not gonna not be able to stare at myself
in the camera. (chuckles)
So, here we go!
Now, you may not have known who all those celebrities were
or perhaps you recognize the ones more
when they didn't have their eyebrows,
but it's important to remember that the studies found
on average, after studying many people,
that when eyebrows were removed,
it was harder to recognize the faces.
Why would removing the eyebrows have such an impact
on recognition, especially over the eyes and mouth
which we've always sort of assumed are the main emotive
and recognizable features of a face?
So much so that most of our facial recognition software
that we interact with relies on our mouth and eyes,
which you might've noticed in a world
where we now wear masks and your phone's not able
to even recognize your face until you take it off.
Okay, this has to go now. (chuckles)
If you need even more evidence
that eyebrows are weird yet important,
take a look at the Mona Lisa, perhaps the most famous
and enigmatic painting ever has no eyebrows.
Coincidence?
Like what if she's just actually a famous celebrity
and none of us can recognize who she truly is?
In all seriousness though, the science is really cool.
And next to apes or monkeys, it becomes glaringly strange
and something I never really noticed before.
They have nearly full faces of hair
and yet we only really retained visible hair
on our eyebrows.
Not to mention our massive hairless foreheads in comparison.
Even next to a human with a full face of hair,
the skin ratio is so much higher.
What's that about?
Why did evolution lead us to lose most of our facial hair
except this random little part above the eyes?
I'm glad you asked.
Well, one of the most distinct features
of modern humans is actually our brow ridge
which you can clearly see when looking at our skulls.
We evolved smooth long foreheads
and agile eyebrows compared to a stiff brow ridge
of archaic hominids.
A long-standing explanation of eyebrows was simply
that they helped keep sweat, rain,
and sunlight out of our eyes.
After all, the hairs grow outwards
towards the side of the face,
which can help direct moisture or dirt away.
Others have suggested that the different testosterone levels
in early hominids or our brain's frontal lobe growing larger
over time may play a role.
But after further analysis, some of the most interesting
and newer research has suggested that it may actually have
to do with a very human trait, empathy.
As we became an increasingly social species
and relied more and more on communication,
our eyebrows actually helped us to facilitate
and show emotions which increased survival.
While early hominids likely preferred a heavy brow ridge
as a show of dominance and strength,
the need for this would have slowly diminished
as communication became more useful.
Think about the way that your eyebrows can communicate,
sometimes even involuntarily
without even changing other parts of your face.
Not only can you convey emotions that are big like surprise,
happiness, anger, but even minor movements
of your eyebrows can cue subtle changes
in your emotions like being concerned or concentrating.
A simple example is this cartoon face.
Take the exact same face and only change the eyebrows,
and you get three different expressions or emotions.
Another advantage of your eyebrows for expression over,
say your eyes or your mouth,
is that they're an area of high contrast,
even from a distance.
Whether you're looking at somebody from far away
or even at a low resolution,
eyebrows are often still visible and continue
to make an important contribution to the geometric
and photometric structure of an observed image.
And since they sit at the top of your face
and protrude slightly, they're less susceptible
to shadows and illumination changes.
Perhaps one of the most interesting things
I came across was the use of eyebrow expression
not only in sign language communication,
but even the use of eyebrows in those
who are completely blind.
For deaf people without vocal intonation, tone,
or stressing words or syllables, the eyebrows help modulate
and complement hand and body signs.
A perfect example is the raising of an eyebrow,
which naturally serves as a question,
much like raising the pitch of your voice
at the end of a sentence does.
And for blind people, it turns out that even those
that are blind from birth still express
and use their eyebrows for emotions
in the exact same way that sighted people do.
When spontaneously surprised or disappointed,
the muscles in the face and eyebrows contract and relax
in the ways you would expect.
Interestingly,
where blind people differ is recreating facial expressions
on command.
Because sighted people have practice using mirrors
as a feedback system, it's much easier for them
to recreate facial expressions when asked to.
Perhaps one of the cutest examples
of eyebrow importance comes from our furry companions, dogs.
It turns out that dogs
with the most expressive eyebrows are the most likely
to be adopted from shelters.
In fact, wolves,
who share a common ancestor with dogs,
physically lack the muscles
to control their eyebrows and eyes,
whereas almost all dogs have a muscle
that pulls the lateral corner of their eyelid
toward the ears called the levator anguli oculi medialis.
Expressive dog eyebrows are actually the result
of unconscious human preference.
We so value the communication exhibited from eyebrows
that dogs that are able to express
that way have a selective advantage.
Honestly, I never thought I would find eyebrows
so fascinating, but researching it and looking into it
and realizing how connected they are
to not only our evolution,
but our ability to communicate as a species,
not only with each other, but with dogs, obviously, so cool,
ultimately just illuminates how important
these forehead mustaches really are.
At the end of the day, it's an amazing
and really interesting example
of how some of our traits and their evolution have more
to do with our minds than our environment.
A huge thank you to Skillshare for sponsoring today's video.
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to which I am very grateful
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that I took.
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and we will see you next time
for some more science, peace!