Why Do Humans Have Eyelashes?
Eye lashes are 1/3rd as long as eyes are wide. This is true, not only for most humans of all races, but for 21 other mammal species as well. This is the body’s spectacular engineering to control the air flow around the eye to keep dust out and moisture in, reports Dr. David Hu of the Georgia Institute of Technology this year (Journal of the Royal Society interface). He was able to determine this by computer modeling the air flow around the eye as lash length changed. “By reducing airflow over the corneas, eyelashes create a boundary layer of slow-moving air around the eye”, reports The Economist, February 28, 2015.
The fact that eyelashes are used in flirting, may be an acquired feature of the human species. I apologize to our female readership if I burst their styling and flirtatious bubble.
I assume you mean mammal “species”, not “specials.” Excellent blog but a good percentage of the posts are agrammatical with poor spelling (the links between verbs and correct pronouns are especially bad). I know this is not how a physician talks or spells; is someone transcribing and not proofing?
Thank you for pointing out the mistakes. Note however, the caption grey/blue highlighted boxes are comments or questions directly from readers (unedited). We generally leave their spelling and grammar mistakes uncorrected. This is an informal blog and not a medical journal so please forgive our errors. Feel free to contact us if you would like to be involved in proofing our edits.