• Question: why do people have different shaped eyebrows if they are for the same purpose?

    Asked by maevelewisxo to Damien, Rachael, Simon, Suzi, Tim on 16 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hah, good question.
      People’s eyebrows are not THAT different in shape really, and lots of other body parts are different between different people (like big noses or tiny ears!). Also, a lot of people (ladies mainly) modify and alter their eyebrows. Perhaps if we all left our eyebrows along they’d all look more similar.
      The purpose of eyebrows is to stop sweat from falling in to the eyes, but humans use their eyebrows a lot more, to express emotion.

      In fact, I just read about an amazing study where people had to recognise a celebrity with either their eyes or their eyebrows blocked out. Amazingly they were more able to recognise celebs by their eyebrows than by their eyes!

      Hope this answers your question!

    • Photo: Damien Hall

      Damien Hall answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      You would need to ask someone who studies the biology of evolution about this really. But I think it’s because eyebrows follow the line of the eye-socket in the skull – you can feel it if you stroke along your eyebrow – and everyone’s skull is different.

      But that doesn’t really answer the question – it just asks a different one, which is something scientists are very good at when they don’t know the answer to the first question! The question then becomes why people’s skulls are all different when they are all for the same purpose (to carry brains, eyes and other things). For that, I really don’t know the answer, but I suspect it’s to do with racial differences. But that’s just moving the question on again …

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