A Chin-Stroking Mystery: Why Are Humans the Only Animals With Chins?
www.smithsonianmag.com
It's an evolutionary conundrum, and scientists are still divided over the answer
  • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.worldEnglish
    95·
    5 days ago

    I’m gonna guess the same reason we have big knuckles/fists and men have facial hair. Fighting.

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        13·
        5 days ago

        It’s neither beneficial nor an inherent detriment.

        It doesn’t provide enough padding to matter for anything, and the dangers of it bring grabbed are vastly exaggerated (been doing martial arts and grappling in one form or another since jr high, if you count a little wresting then, so over thirty years with breaks here and there, and bearded the entire adult time).

        At best, blows will slide more and cut less, but not enough to really matter. At worst, having it grabbed hurts, which can be a bad distraction, but it isn’t so sturdy as to not be easy to escape. It either pulls loose if their grip is bad, pulls out if their grip is good enough, or makes sure their hands are easy to reach, and allows you an easy access inside their reach.

        Every little pro has a con, and vice versa, with none of it being a deciding factor.

        A ponytail is worse, and a braid worse than that.

        Besides, anyone with a beard that isn’t just full mountain man is going to be oiling or otherwise treating their beard. This makes bare handed grips next to useless on them. And if you’re in a full contact sparring session, you’ll have other options to keep it from being a horrible thing.

        Seriously. I have never once been tapped out because of my beard. I’ve never had any idiot during my years as a bouncer be successful in using it against me. Now, I have had to trim or shave it back because of having wads of it snatched out, but that’s still a very minor issue compared to the other things that can happen in a fight.

        If anything, the fact that people tend to have this weird reaction to a big, bearded guy compared to just a big guy, you get in less fights in my experience outside of training or a job. Going places with a full beard, even drunks wouldn’t fuck with me the way they would other big guys. There’s a bit of some kind of reaction where people think a beard = tough sometimes. No clue why, just that it’s often enough to have noticed.

        • Donkter@lemmy.worldEnglish
          81·
          5 days ago

          But you ask anyone who knows anything about fighting and the first thing they tell you to do is to cut your hair short because it’s just an easy handle to grab on to.

      • dohpaz42@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        5 days ago

        As in a signal of how manly a man truly is, comparative to still being a boy.

        Edit: also, hair is counter productive in a fight, because it gives your opponent something to grab a hold of and use against you.

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.worldEnglish
    403·
    5 days ago

    “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.

    • andyburke@fedia.io
      34·
      5 days ago

      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.

      • No_Eponym@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        hard to find evidince

        This is, like, an undergrad project.

        1. 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.

        2. get an appropriate number of headshots from undergrad males for stimuli, give them intro psyc course credit for participating.

        3. 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

        4. have an appropriate number of undergrad cis-het women subjects rate a your lineup for attractiveness; intro psyc course credit for participation

        5. analyze the results to see if low chin is selected less than normal or emphasized.

        6. 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…

        • Azzu@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          5 days ago

          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

  • Naz@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    714·
    5 days ago

    Artificial Intelligence Analysis:

    The chin is situated near the area where the tongue and jawbone interact during speech. It’s possible that the chin provides a surface for the tongue to move against, allowing for more complex sounds and articulations. The development of language is believed to have occurred around the same time as the emergence of Homo sapiens. While other primates have similar facial structures, they don’t possess a distinct chin. This suggests that the chin might be related to the unique demands of human language.

    Bingo – other animals don’t have a chin because they didn’t invent languages like humans did for communication, and thus the demands of speaking weren’t evenly distributed.

    Next time on interesting questions 104: Why did homo sapiens develop language when other animals such as Corvids did not?

    • SPRUNT@lemmy.worldEnglish
      22·
      5 days ago

      This makes more sense than the need to put on pillow cases (which has been my prevailing theory up to this point), but your question about corvids intrigues me. Partially because I’m not entirely certain of what a corvids is.

    • Hadriscus@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      5 days ago

      I do lick my chin a lot when articulating language. As we all do, right…? fellow humanoids ?

  • erp@lemmy.worldEnglish
    573·
    5 days ago

    If I am not mistaken, according to the grammatical scrolls, having a chin makes everyone … chinese

  • dohpaz42@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    5 days ago

    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.

    • olafurp@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      I think this is plausible, also the fact that when you lean your head a little bit forward you expose the front of the skull which is the thickest part while the chin prevents people from punching your neck.