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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		What's behind the amazing variety of human faces?
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:03
	Publish Date:		2016-01-04 00:00:00
	Description:		Have you ever wondered about the amazing variety of human faces? And why this variety is far greater than that of most other animals? According to behavioral ecologist Michael Sheehan of the University of California, Berkeley, our highly visual social interactions are one of the main drivers of this evolutionary trend of individually unique faces. "Recognition is a really important part of our social lives, so therefore there may have been selection for individuals to be more recognizable and make recognition a little bit easier." The researchers used a U.S. Army database of body measurements and found that, as predicted, facial traits are much more variable than other parts of the body, like the length of the hand, and that facial traits are independent of other facial traits, unlike most body measures. "And this would be one way to create lots of different variation in the overall phenotype and make individuals more distinctive. So one thing I think this research highlights is an interesting question for people to begin pursuing further about the importance of identity in different types of contexts, what is the benefit of being individual and distinctive under different situations."
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