Eight Eyebrow Facts

Eyebrows are tufts of hair that follow the shape of the ridge of the brow in mammals. They are very small and personal, but (mostly women) annually spend billions to pluck, tweeze, paint, scarify, shape, tattoo, pierce, puff, and generally do many unnatural things to this unique part of the human body. They are profoundly expressive of mood.

• The function of our brows is to keep moisture out of our eyes when it is raining or when we sweat. That arched shape helps divert liquid to the side of our faces.
• According to the Bosley hair transplant company, the average person has about 250 hairs per eyebrow.
• The average lifespan of an eyebrow is four months.
• A study done by MIT found that people had more trouble correctly identifying the faces of people they knew when they were presented with images of them missing their eyebrows and concluded that brows may be more important for facial recognition than eyes.
• Brows help us signal emotions, as the pitch of your voice rises, so do your eyebrows and vice versa.
• When you make an expression without thinking, eyebrows move in a way that is symmetrical to each other. Conversely, when you make what’s called an ‘intended’ expression, like suspicion and curiosity, your brows will furrow asymmetrically.
• Man is the only species that has eyebrows against bare skin.
• Every culture and time period has had a different way of shaping their brows: In Florence during the Renaissance, people shaved their eyebrows off completely, while the colonial elite in 18th-century America preferred to beef their brows up using grey mouse skin.