My guess is most people are saying they would keep their eyeballs.

Obviously, eyebrows, air, 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.

Okay, I 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 going to not be able to stare at myself in the camera.

So here we go now, you may not have known who all those celebrities were, or perhaps you recognize the ones Mawr 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 motive 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?

But you might have 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 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 could 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 Onley 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 longstanding 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 new research has suggested that it may actually have to do with the very human trait empathy.

As we became an increasingly social species and relied mawr and mawr 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 in voluntarily, without even changing other parts your face.

Not only can you convey emotions that are big, like surprise, happiness, anger, but even minor movements of your eyebrows can Q subtle changes in your emotions, like being concerned or concentrating?

A simple example is this cartoon face.

Take the exact same face and Onley.

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 photo metric structure.

Oven 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 Onley in sign language communication, but even the use of eyebrows and 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 science.

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.

But perhaps one of the cutest examples of eyebrow importance comes from our furry companions.

Dogs 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 elevator angle I Oculus media ally 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 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 mustache is really are.

At the end of the day, it's amazing and really interesting example of how some of our traits and their evolution have more to do with our minds than our environment.

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