Bushy or smooth, arched or straight. Eyebrows come in a range of shapes and sizes, and are vital cues to expressing our moods. They're pretty handy in the heat, too.

The reason we have eyebrows was originally to keep rain & sweat out of our eyes. As a species we humans rely on our eyes more than any other sense, &  with no eyebrows water can get in & seriously blur vision. Eyebrows may also ward off debris & shield our eyes from the Sun. So while we slowly evolved to lose most of our body hair, our eyelashes & eyebrows remained.

But eyebrows then took on another function: communication. Facial expressions convey meaning & emotions in ways that are hard to fake, & the eyebrows exaggerate expressions. Even in cartoons, a simple line above the eyes is enough to denote anger, fear, or surprise in a face, & experiments have shown that we can recognize a familiar face more easily when the eyes are blanked out than when the eyebrows are.

So if you are tempted to get your eyebrows on fleek with a pluck or shave, do remember their several uses, particularly if you are going to replace them with a tattoo!