Why do we all look different

magic_murph

For the most part -
All chimps look the same
All Gorillas look the same
All lions, tigers and bears look the same

Basically if you are of animal Type A,B,C etc you will look the same

But as humans we are all totally different, for the most part, why is that ?

amcalester

To you they look the same, to people who know what to look for they look different.

Same for humans, you've trained your whole life to be able to tell the difference.

oLoonatic

I'm sure tigers think all humans look the same.

Deebles McBeebles

Dogs OP, look at dogs. All came from wolves.

punisher5112

oLoonatic wrote: »

I'm sure tigers think all humans look the same.

Yum yum ....

corner of hells

These threads are AH at it's finest.

OP take yoself down to your local petshop and ask to see guppies and then goldfish.

Franz Von Peppercorn

magic_murph wrote: »

For the most part -
All chimps look the same
All Gorillas look the same
All lions, tigers and bears look the same

Basically if you are of animal Type A,B,C etc you will look the same

But as humans we are all totally different, for the most part, why is that ?

Cars and dogs don’t.

We do look more different that some animals though, hair and eye colour, nose shape, mouth shape and facial bone structure have quite a few variables.

magic_murph

magic_murph wrote: »

For the most part -
All chimps look the same
All Gorillas look the same
All lions, tigers and bears look the same

Basically if you are of animal Type A,B,C etc you will look the same

But as humans we are all totally different, for the most part, why is that ?

There are different reasons for this but one of the more interesting ones is that we are actually not as different as you think. Rather we have evolved to process differences in our peer group or society stronger than things outside it and to therefore perceive there being more differences than there actually is.

This is the reason for people sometimes saying "All X people look the same to me" for example. During their childhood they would have seen few people from that colour or race and so they did not develop the processing that strengthens their sensitivity to the differences.

This is not just in us too. We see the same in monkeys: https://www.pnas.org/content/105/1/394 while another study I can not actually find now but I am pretty sure I did not imagine - but apologies if I did - shows human children who were shown a lot of primate faces as they developed had a much better ability to distinguish individuals of said species than most adults. All monkeys really look the same to me.

This is likely how caricature works so well on the human brain. The artist drawing caricature is - whether they know it or not - simply subtracting the "normal" face from a given individuals face - taking what little differences remain and exaggerating them wildly. Which likely hyper stimulates the parts of our brain that are already hyper sensitive to even minor differences between faces.

So while there is differences - and that is an interesting question as to why that might be - it may also be that your brain is making you think there is a lot more differences than there is in us and a lot less in other animals. Monkeys might be sitting around looking at each other thinking "Why are we all so different when humans look all the same to me!?"

Somedaythefire

magic_murph wrote: »

For the most part -
All chimps look the same

They don't.

magic_murph wrote: »

All Gorillas look the same

They don't.

magic_murph wrote: »

All lions, tigers and bears look the same

They don't.

magic_murph wrote: »

Basically if you are of animal Type A,B,C etc you will look the same

They won't.

magic_murph wrote: »

But as humans we are all totally different, for the most part, why is that ?

We aren't.


It's your brain playing tricks on you. Because you've grown up around and been conditioned to recognise the differences in humans you can see it easier. If you grew up around chimpanzee's you'd more readily recognise the differences in appearances amongst them.

Tired Gardener

I don't think there is one answer to this, but rather a lot of different ideas.

Humans have migrated to most parts of the planet, and live in a very wide range of environmental conditions. This means that a few minor evolutionary changes to adapt to those environment have taken place. Colder climates where there is less sun result in paler skin and thin noses, etc.

Most other animals tend to be found in a smaller range of environmental habitats. Those that have migrated to different areas will have some variation.

Then we have to factor in that we are evolved at reading faces, we Humans use our eyes and faces to communicate a lot of information, this has helped shape our focus on the shape and structure of the Human face, it is good to know whether a stranger is a threat or an ally.

Because of this we tend not to register any of the variations in animal faces, other than those that we have altered due to selective breeding.

A lot of animals rely on smell as a way to distinguish one another, our sense of smell isn't that great, we rely on our sight as our primary sense.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Lot of certainty in posters here that we are just seeing things and that it’s conditioning. The latter wouldn’t necessarily be true even if human faces were really similar as it could well be biological. There probably is something biological in how fast we see faces we know in crowds, or recognise age etc.

But human faces are in fact very different.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140916112240.htm

Franz Von Peppercorn

corner of hells wrote: »

These threads are AH at it's finest.

OP take yoself down to your local petshop and ask to see guppies and then goldfish.

He obviously means the same species.

rgodard80a

Doesn't help that humanity has completely bypassed natural selection either, where the weak, crippled, short, fat, blind, deaf etc that would've been killed by predators (not the alien kind) are all surviving and reproducing.

Polluting the gene pool with all sorts of varieties that under natural circumstances in a balanced predator/prey eco-system would not survive.

You could argue, especially where humans are destroying the natural world, that only the best in breed of animals are surviving or adapting. Limiting variety.

Somedaythefire

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Lot of certainty in posters here that we are just seeing things and that it’s conditioning. The latter wouldn’t necessarily be true even if human faces were really similar as it could well be biological. There probably is something biological in how fast we see faces we know in crowds, or recognise age etc.

But human faces are in fact very different.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140916112240.htm

The conditioning isn't why we look different, it's how we perceive and understand the differences on an instictual level. All chimpanzees (or insert any animal here) look very different too, but we just don't recognise those differences.

Pherekydes

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Cars and dogs don’t.

My car looks exactly like a Ferrari, even though it's a Duster.

Splain me that?

stoneill

I look in the mirror, I see me da looking back at me.

stoneill

stoneill wrote: »

I look in the mirror, I see me da looking back at me.

And I am sure he has been planning on fixing that hole in the wall for years.

Avatar MIA

Relieved, was expecting the OP to finish with

All Black people...

Sardonicat

rgodard80a wrote: »

Doesn't help that humanity has completely bypassed natural selection either, where the weak, crippled, short, fat, blind, deaf etc that would've been killed by predators (not the alien kind) are all surviving and reproducing.

Polluting the gene pool with all sorts of varieties that under natural circumstances in a balanced predator/prey eco-system would not survive.

You could argue, especially where humans are destroying the natural world, that only the best in breed of animals are surviving or adapting. Limiting variety.

The 1930s called. Thinks you might come in handy with a project it's got in the -ahem- 'pipeline'.

CPTM

Avatar MIA wrote: »

All Black people...

They're a different breed altogether. I always think they look the same actually, but only when they're wearing their jersey and running all over the place.

BeerWolf

Deebles McBeebles wrote: »

Dogs OP, look at dogs. All came from wolves.

We're mongrels

Wibbs

rgodard80a wrote: »

Doesn't help that humanity has completely bypassed natural selection either, where the weak, crippled, short, fat, blind, deaf etc that would've been killed by predators (not the alien kind) are all surviving and reproducing.

We've been bypassing and externalising our evolution for at least half a million years. It's one of the largest differences between us and the rest of life on the planet.

In modern populations Europeans would be the most diverse looking by quite a distance. Non Europeans would have dark brown/black hair which tends to a particular curl or not depending on the population and brown eyes. In Europeans even within small groups you can have brown, green, blue, even purple eyes and curly or straight hair from very light blonde through red and various browns to jet black. One hypothesis has it that our population density got very low at one point and to avoid inbreeding Europeans positively selected for external differences. Not so sure about that as many differences like blue eyes for example only show up around the time agriculture does when populations were growing. Interestingly Neandertals who were also Europeans may have been similar in some external differences. It's been suggested some had light eyes and light skin, even red hair as well as dark, so maybe it's a local environmental thing in some way. The problem with that is the genes involved for things like hair and eye colour are not exactly clear cut, certainly not as clear cut as some have suggested in the media* and pinning down such features is not quite here yet.




*EG the recent unveiling of a reconstruction of an early Briton with very dark skin. They claimed it was scientific, but it was anything but. At best conjecture.

Force Carrier

Tired Gardener

Wibbs wrote: »

the recent unveiling of a reconstruction of an early Briton with very dark skin. They claimed it was scientific, but it was anything but. At best conjecture.

Just ignore all the DNA analysis that was done... it was very scientific, the Cheddar Gorge Man as he is also known was black with blue eyes, we know this from DNA testing.

joe40

The Human brain is particularly good at recognising patterns. There are several optical illusions tests, to demonstrate this. Even where our Brain imposes patterns that aren't there.

We are particularly good at recognising faces. Did you ever see an old grainy photograph with blurred images but you can still recognise a face that you are familiar with, even from a few blurry pixels.

Badly Drunk Boy

Franz Von Peppercorn wrote: »

Cars and dogs don’t.

We do look more different that some animals though, hair and eye colour, nose shape, mouth shape and facial bone structure have quite a few variables.

I'm sure if you shave a few different dogs of the same breed they'd start to look different. With the amount of lads with beards nowadays, it's not hard to mistake one person from the other.

Then you have the condition of prosopagnosia, where some people can't recognise faces, even of close family members, and having to rely on the voice or even the clothes that the people around them wear.

I work with two twins who aren't identical but are very similar. I can tell them apart from 50 metres but some people can never distinguish them from each other. Actually, one of the twins told me that sometimes if he sees a photo of them together, he'd only know the difference by the clothes they're wearing (and he doesn't have prosopagnosia).

I'm only going to barely touch on this (for safety reasons!) this can also be a thing when it comes to race. You might sometimes hear people say of another race that they all look the same, whether they be black, Chinese, or whatever.

Basically, they more you're exposed to people (or even animals), the more likely that you'll see differences. It also depends on your openness to see the differences too, though...

Wibbs

Tired Gardener wrote: »

Just ignore all the DNA analysis that was done... it was very scientific, the Cheddar Gorge Man as he is also known was black with blue eyes, we know this from DNA testing.

Nope. I'm afraid not. Another example of media dumbing down science in search of an easily digested headline and sadly too many running to conclusions on shaky interpretation of data. Many actual scientists, including some from the team that did the DNA analysis have said it's nowhere near conclusive. You may not have a subscription, but the part of the article that's relevant is; "one of the geneticists who performed the research says the conclusion is less certain, and according to others we are not even close to knowing the skin colour of any ancient human."

begbysback

Pherekydes wrote: »

My car looks exactly like a Ferrari, even though it's a Duster.

Splain me that?

It is actually a Ferrari, but for insurance purposes Dacia have been clever enough to make it look like a Duster

magic_murph

take 100 irish, english, african, french, germany etc and put in a room
That will be a lot of different looking people - hair, eye, skin colour, height, size etc all different

Put a 1000's of elephants or lions in a room and they will all look much the same. Yes there will be some differences but not to the same degree as humans.

DEFTLEFTHAND

White race is definitely the most diverse.

From swarthy brown eyed Spaniards and Italians to pale blue eyed nordics and everything in between.

Wibbs

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

White race is definitely the most diverse.

Well the Indo-European population. Which includes Europe, west Asia, the Middle East, parts of North Africa. An extremely diverse bunch in appearance. On the other hand and interestingly genetically they're less diverse than West Asians and Africans have the widest genetic diversity on Earth. It can depend what features we look at too, so while African Pygmy, Masai and San all have darker skin, dark hair in thick curls and brown eyes they look like very different folks, genetically too.

Maasai


San


Batwa Pygmy


We're a very diverse lot us humans.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Somedaythefire wrote: »

The conditioning isn't why we look different, it's how we perceive and understand the differences on an instictual level. All chimpanzees (or insert any animal here) look very different too, but we just don't recognise those differences.

Here’s what the article I linked to says.

The amazing variety of human faces -- far greater than that of most other animals -- is the result of evolutionary pressure to make each of us unique and easily recognizable, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists.

And this diversity is why we have so much of our brain adapted to facial recognition.

Ian OB

Came across this a while ago. Might be relevant to the topic.


http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/Frost_06.html

rgodard80a

Sardonicat wrote: »

The 1930s called. Thinks you might come in handy with a project it's got in the -ahem- 'pipeline'.

Godwin strikes again. :rolleyes:

Where did I advocate genocide ?
Simple things like antibiotics, insulin injections, C-sections etc have bypassed natural selection. I didn't say we need to abandon them... although antibiotic resistant bacteria will probably give the population a bit of a weeding in the future.

DaeryssaOne

I think I heard that different races will eye-scan different 'areas of interest' on people's faces so that's why some could regard other races as 'looking the same'.

For example Asian people might look at another Asian person's nose to identify them while a Caucasian may look at the distance between the eyes while an African person scans the distance between the nose and upper lip (I'm making these examples up as I can't remember the exact details).

It's interesting though and shows how we can all recognise other faces differently. I'm dreadful at this myself, I've worked in this job for 6 months now and up until yesterday when they sat next to each other in a meeting I thought two guys who sit near me were the same person.

It's actually something I do struggle with, I don't have that facial recognition problem spoken about above but I am really really bad at remembering both names and faces (so I often appear pretty rude!) :eek:

ToddyDoody

magic_murph wrote: »

For the most part -
All chimps look the same
All Gorillas look the same
All lions, tigers and bears look the same

Basically if you are of animal Type A,B,C etc you will look the same

But as humans we are all totally different, for the most part, why is that ?

Katie Hopkins?

DEFTLEFTHAND

DaeryssaOne wrote: »

I think I heard that different races will eye-scan different 'areas of interest' on people's faces so that's why some could regard other races as 'looking the same'.

For example Asian people might look at another Asian person's nose to identify them while a Caucasian may look at the distance between the eyes while an African person scans the distance between the nose and upper lip (I'm making these examples up as I can't remember the exact details).

It's interesting though and shows how we can all recognise other faces differently. I'm dreadful at this myself, I've worked in this job for 6 months now and up until yesterday when they sat next to each other in a meeting I thought two guys who sit near me were the same person.

It's actually something I do struggle with, I don't have that facial recognition problem spoken about above but I am really really bad at remembering both names and faces (so I often appear pretty rude!) :eek:

I'm the same. I'm always blowing people off on the street.

I'm just not good at faces, I don't remember people. I went to a 10 yr school reunion a couple of yrs back and didn't know who I was talking to half the time.

It's rotten because people think you're being a big stuck up asshole.

BrokenArrows

magic_murph wrote: »

For the most part -
All chimps look the same
All Gorillas look the same
All lions, tigers and bears look the same

Basically if you are of animal Type A,B,C etc you will look the same

But as humans we are all totally different, for the most part, why is that ?

A,B and C do not all look the same.