Usually when you first formally meet someone you look the individual in their eyes. To many it is a form of respect and trust; and leads the other person to elude that you have a sense of confidence about yourself. Recently, when I met my friends roommate for the first time we made eye contact. As our eyes met one another she complimented my eye lashes commenting that they were nice. By nice I am assuming she meant long. After she made this comment I got to thinking. What is the actual purpose of our eye lashes. Now ladies, I know you love buying mascara and trying to get the perfect lashes but what exactly do they do except for making our face more appealing?

We also all have seen that new famous vine video highlighting eyebrows and by saying “eyebrows on fleek.” Now other than making them look pretty and keeping them waxed what purpose do they serve. Essentially they are they eyelashes partner in crime, being how close they are.

Given I took anatomy, I know that nine times out of ten each thing on our body serves a purpose. Our fingers grab things, our skin secretes and protects, our hair keeps us warm and protects us, our feet help us walk, our spine helps us stay upright , etc. The list goes on. Often we forget about the purpose of smaller things such as our eyebrows and eyelashes.

According to MeMD medical blog, “As humans evolveed, we lost a lot of excess body and facial hair along the way. But the eyebrows and eyelashes remained a core part of our features.” Going off of evolution , this notion makes sense given we did start out a bit on the hairy side.

Going off of the same medical website , eyebrows serve as the big brother for the eyes. They protect the eyes from sweat and moisture getting into them. Scientists say that the arch in our eyebrows was designed for the sweat and moisture to drip down the sides of our face. According to medical blogger Kat Smith, “experts believe that if humans did not evolve to have eyebrows, we may have developed extremely pronounced foreheads or really long eyelashes to help keep moisture out.”

Unlike the eyebrows, our eyelashes have multiple jobs. First, they protect our eyes from debris and other harmful things that could get in our eyes and cause possible irritation. Our eyelashes also warn us to detect unwanted objects such as flies or gnats. This is why we automatically blink at the first sensation of a foreign object invading our eyes. Some even say our eyelashes help filter sunlight so we don’t get direct exposure to the bright sun( hence, we sometimes wince when we walk into bright light.)

While all this is nice and informative ,in class Andrew always teaches us to be scientist. Find a problem, experiment, ask questions, and eventually try and find an answer. While right now these findings seem to be logical and true ; we have to think about the future and other possible counter-arguments. What if someone later detests the idea of evolution? Then parts of my argument would be proven false. What if someone later in science says something along the lines that our eyelashes true soul purpose was to attract the opposite so we can do what many think our real job on earth is (which is to reproduce.)

With that being said, in the comments I would like to open an argument and ask whether or not you believe that eyelashes/eyebrows have jobs other than what I listed.

http://www.livescience.com/32352-what-are-eyelashes-for.html

http://www.memd.me/why-do-we-have-eyebrows-and-eyelashes/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyelash

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131115-why-do-you-have-eyebrows