Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. Lauren bog Obam here with a classic episode
Speaker 1: from our erstwhile host, Christian Sagar. This is what I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about because of all the time I've been
Speaker 1: spending when I am out in public interacting with people
Speaker 1: who are wearing a covering over the lower half of
Speaker 1: their face. The question of the day is why do
Speaker 1: we have eyebrows? Hey, brain stuff? It's Christian Saga, and
Speaker 1: I'm here to tell you why human beings have eyebrows,
Speaker 1: because look at them. Take clus look, go over to
Speaker 1: the mirror. Look, aren't they just ridiculous? I mean, they're
Speaker 1: also very well manicured, but they're also ridiculous. Now, scientists
Speaker 1: aren't entirely sure why we have this hair, but they
Speaker 1: have a pretty good guess. The arch shape of the
Speaker 1: eyebrow diverts rain or sweat around to the sides of
Speaker 1: our face, keeping our eyes relatively dry, and the most
Speaker 1: obvious advantage of this is that it allows us to
Speaker 1: see clearly even when we're sweating a lot. Diverting the
Speaker 1: sweat away is also good because the salt in sweat
Speaker 1: irritates our eyes. But just to test things. I shook
Speaker 1: a salt shaker into my eye and take it from me.
Speaker 1: It burns like hell fire. Eyebrows are a very significant
Speaker 1: aspect of our appearance. They are one of the most
Speaker 1: distinctive features that make up our faces, and we pay
Speaker 1: a lot of attention to them and look. Eyebrows are
Speaker 1: also one of the most expressive facial features. One of
Speaker 1: the clearest ways we're telling somebody what we're thinking is
Speaker 1: to simply move our eyebrows up and down. But what
Speaker 1: if we didn't have eyebrows. Scientists have thought about this
Speaker 1: as well, and they think that if we didn't have eyebrows,
Speaker 1: we would have gotten instead these long snuffle luck bagus
Speaker 1: style eyelashes, as well as far protruding foreheads, which could
Speaker 1: have been kind of useful because we could put things
Speaker 1: up there I don't know, like like our keys, but
Speaker 1: rain or sweat would then drop from that ledge on
Speaker 1: our face straight away down onto the rest of our
Speaker 1: face without getting into our eyes. So all right, way
Speaker 1: to go, evolution for not making us look like that.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by someone I could not figure
Speaker 1: out who, but it was produced by Tyler Clang. For
Speaker 1: more on this and lots of other topics. Is it
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com brain Stuff is production of
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Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows,