What else would I stroke while thinking? 🤔
To enable the Habsburg dynasty.
But why did we evolve a hook & loop clasp to hold the top of our skull closed?
I hear some people are born with just a solid skull with no hinges, it makes me so uncomfortable.
This was a good, short read. Worth the time.
Some humans even have double
Some even have none
Would.
ive never seen a youtube music link in my life lol
What does it do different?
The only plus ive ever heard is getting youtube premium with it.
No, I mean what does linking with the subdomain do for folks who don’t have accounts?
I was gonna say elephants have chins too, as I’m re-watching old QI seasons and they brought up this fact, but upon further research their chins aren’t true chins with a bony protrusion.
I’ll always upvote a Qi reference
They say of the Acropolis where the Parthenon is
Useful in fighting as it helps protect the lower jaw and teeth?
But then again, it could simply be a trait we have developed over the millennia, and there is no deeper meaning to it.
Idk, I was assured that pigs had a Chinny-chin-chin.
That’s the exact lead in of the Atlantic article about this (paywall)
Have you seen humans without chins? That’s why
My grandma said I was the most handsome boy… Are you calling my dead grandmother a liar?!
Yep
Duh it’s where.our chin horn used to be…
The “spandrel hypothesis” is the front runner explanation. Essentially we didn’t evolve to have chins but rather evolved other things that are helpful, and the chin is a byproduct of that other evolution. Not harmful so it didn’t get selected away, but not helpful.
“If you’re looking across all of the hominids, which is the family tree after the split with chimpanzees, there [are] not really that many traits that we can point to that we can say are exclusively human,” Duke University’s James Pampush tells Robert Siegel for NPR. “[T]hose animals all walked on two legs. The one thing that really sticks out is the chin.”
One of the most popular ideas is that our ancestors evolved chins to strengthen our lower jaws to withstand the stresses of chewing. But according to Pampush, the chin is in the wrong place to reinforce the jaw. As for helping us speak, he doubts that the tongue generates enough force to make this necessary. A third idea is that the chin could help people choose mates, but sexually selective features like this typically only develop in one gender, Pampush tells Siegel.
The spandrel hypothesis is as good a theory as any, but it too has its problems. It’s hard to find evidence to test if something is an evolutionary byproduct, especially if it doesn’t serve an obvious function. But if researchers one day do manage to figure out where the chin came from, it could put together another piece of the puzzle of what makes us different from our primate and Neanderthal cousins, Yong writes.
The dismissal of a sexually selected trait just because it usually is far more pronounced in one sex than the other seems extemely premature to me.
I would argue chins are actually already quite different between the sexes - to the point where people will have surgery to change their appearance if their chin doesn’t conform to societal ideals.
Sexually selected trait seems like an avenue of research that shouldn’t be so easily dismissed.
hard to find evidince
This is, like, an undergrad project.
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work with the depressed grad student who is good at stats to determine the parameters of your experiment at the outset and calculate the number of subjects and stimuli for statistical power; pay in marking or research help.
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get an appropriate number of headshots from undergrad males for stimuli, give them intro psyc course credit for participating.
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work with mid-degree graphic design students to give all headshots 3 levels of chins (low, normal, emphasized), ensuring none are comical; the the psyc grad student signs off on the work as portfolio credit
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have an appropriate number of undergrad cis-het women subjects rate a your lineup for attractiveness; intro psyc course credit for participation
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analyze the results to see if low chin is selected less than normal or emphasized.
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submit your research paper and results; get your 4th year class capstone. Grad student takes your work and adds it to their dissertation, you get a footnote.
I’m sure this has been done…
I don’t have a source on hand, but I’m sure that a pronounced chin has been found in studies as male attractiveness symbol
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Of course we know why. So that evolution could result in the universe’s most perfect being.
