What evolutionary advantage is served (if any) by the ability to cock one's eyebrow? I've often wondered that, being able to cock my right eyebrow (but not the left) my whole life. Not everybody can cock their eyebrows. Some can do one, some can do the other, and some can even do both. So, clearly there is a gene or something at work with eyebrow-cocking. And as such, what is the selection process for it? How does it get passed on? Is it a favorable adaptation/mutation in some way? I joked with Leona, my anthropologist friend and former coworker, suggested that the cocked eyebrow was intended to convey bemusement and/or smugness, and perhaps it served some evolutionary advantage in that regard. But we had no conclusions to be derived from it. I don't know if anybody's ever done a study on it. I do, however, wonder about its origins. Who can do it and why they can.Certainly, you can speak volumes without saying a word with a quizzical cock of the eyebrow, usually conveying irony, smugness, amusement, disbelief, incredulity, bemusement, awe, flirtatiousness, slyness. Anything else I'm missing?
But I'm especially amused that some people are unable to do it at all -- how do those poor souls adapt to the inability to cock their eyebrows? And what about the ones who can do both eyebrows? They manage to look extra-impish when they get them both upraised (conjuring images of Jack Nicholson, here).
Fascinating, one might say.
Magic Number: 6.
