daannii

I think it's weird that we have pink rings around our mouth holes and I think it's weird we never talk about how weird that is.

https://lemmy.world/post/44965646

I think it's weird that we have pink rings around our mouth holes and I think it's weird we never talk about how weird that is. - Lemmy.World

Pretty sure we are the only animals with pink rings around our mouth. It’s flipping weird. It probably helps with verbal language understanding as humans often use mouth movements to interpret words (see McGurk effect). But I still think it’s weird. Big pink rings.

Mar 31 at 1:27amWeb
Show thread🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 1d ago
It’d be weirder if they were green or blue.
Show threaddaannii1d ago
That’s definitely true
Show threadflandish1d ago
sometimes they are blue. it’s usually someone on the way to being a corpse, but i’ve seen it.
Show threadMantisToboggon1d ago
I prefer it to my brown ring.
Show threadAgrivar1d ago
You could always get it bleached to match!
Show threadprotist1d ago
Evolutionarily, it probably helps with both speech and nonverbal language, i.e. facial expressions
Show threaddaannii1d ago
Yeah that’s my guess. Since we use language so much and are social. It would help to make facial cues like the mouth shape, more visible.
Show threadaMockTie1d ago

My understanding is that fucus on the mouth in social interactions is also influenced by culture. That’s why some cultures generally represented a happy face with the emoticon :) while others used _

The former is focused on the mouth and the eyes lack meaningful expression, while the latter is the opposite.

Show threadJohnnyEnzyme1d ago

Mandrills, geladas, Rhesus macaques for a few.

Look at most Carnivorans (dogs, cats, etc) and they tend to have black lips. Is that less weird or more weird?

The human mouth is also the most sensitive area of the body (even moreso than lower areas), so that’s almost certainly related. More blood flow and a specialised cell-type…

Show threaddaannii1d ago
They don’t really have plump ring lips like us.
Show threadParagone1d ago
SOME orangutans do: duckduckgo.com/?q=orangutan&iar=images&t=fpas
Show threaddaannii18h ago
Ah so they do. How bout that. Yeah I would agree those are pretty close to human lips.
Show threadJohnnyEnzyme1d ago

They don’t really have plump ring lips like us.

Okay, but I was replying to the OP. What you’re doing here is bringing in a new dimension, i.e. “plump.”

Regardless, I think I already kind of answered that when I talked about kissing. Very few animals I know of do prolonged kissing. Humans do. That, and our sexual attraction cycle is more or less endless, whereas with most animals, it only happens during select times of the year.

As for “why” to both things? I think it’s because humans are vastly more helpless at birth compared to most other animals. We need lots of care, and for a prolonged period. So evolution has drastically increased the mechanisms of sustained attraction between the parents via things like prolonged sensual kissing and a near-endless sexual attraction.

Show threadBarneyPiccolo17h ago
You’re just getting too used to seeing those phony fat-lipped MAGA concubines. They’re normalizing that expensive carved up face image.
Show threadforestbeasts1d ago

100%.

Give me a wolf muzzle any day. Having a human face just feels wrong.

– Frost

Show threadtomiant1d ago
Show threadforestbeasts1d ago

Exactly! 🐺

– Frost

Show threadMidnight Wolf1d ago
Freedom of Form Foundation is working on this (and the rest of the body) :3
Show threadforestbeasts23h ago

I really hope it’s scientifically possible somehow!

Even if not, I bet it’d be more feasible to build a robot wolf body, scoop out our brain and put it inside. I’d take robot wolf over *waves paw at human body* any day.

We’re all feral (for the non-furries reading this: normal animal shaped) which means the rest of the body is significantly harder than it would be for an anthro, but honestly the stuff they’d need to do to our limbs is probably small potatoes compared to the shit they’d need to do to our skull (and that applies equally well to anthros).

– Frost

Show threadhesh1d ago
You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat.
Show threadklugerama1d ago
They’re made of meat?
Show threadtomiant1d ago

The mouth is a sphincter.

It is connected directly to your butthole.

Show threaddaannii1d ago
The mouth is the face anus to the soul.
Show threadBarneyPiccolo17h ago
Wow, embroider that on a pillow.
Show threadMurse1d ago
Fun fact: when two people kiss, they create a long tube that starts and ends with an anus.
Show threadabbadon4201d ago
So you could also extend that tube woth a third person?
Show threadrants_unnecessarily1d ago
Every performed a double butt kiss.
Show threadBarneyPiccolo17h ago
Why, you offering?
Show threaddaannii12h ago
I heard this is called keyhole-to-keyhole
Show threadByteJunk1d ago
Plot for human centipede right here.
Show threadBarneyPiccolo17h ago
How do they think of these things? Just like this, with a bong.
Show threadBarneyPiccolo17h ago
Giggity
Show threadwhaleross23h ago
The fanus.
Show threadfisch23h ago
Delete this comment!
Show threadmimic_dev18h ago
Humans are just meat silly straws
Show threadBarneyPiccolo17h ago
We are just a coiled tube, surrounded and protected by a system maintenance apparatus.
Show threadChaotic_Altruist9h ago
They’re even more histologically related to each other than they are to anything else. Lips and anus look surprisingly similar under a microscope.
Show threadzeppo1d ago
Some other animals do have lips.
Show threaddaannii1d ago
Fish. I think that’s it. Maybe you could argue snails.
Show threadzeppo1d ago
Dogs have lips, for one
Show threadDr. Wesker1d ago
Wanna touch pink rings?
Show threadNoSpotOfGround1d ago
Dr Wesker and Daanni, sitting in a tree, R-I-N-G-I-N-G!
Show threadMerryJaneDoe1d ago

Piglet would like a word with you.

Also cats. Dogs. Lemurs. Rats.

Basically, any creature that has a pink nose probably has pink lips. We just don’t notice because they are mostly covered in fur and proportionately thinner than human lips.

Show threaddaannii1d ago
They don’t really have lips like humans do. We have plump rings around our mouths. Those other animals do not
Show threadParagone1d ago

Tell that to the rest of the great apes…

Color may not be pink, but as 1 African language calls Whites “peeled man” people, lack-of-black isn’t defining of human, it is defining of the subset-of-humans who are caucasian, or who otherwise weren’t tropical-enough to need all the extra melanin ( thank you Bill Nye, for explaining that clearly ).

They’ve definitely got expressive lips, the rest of the great apes…

_ /\ _

Show threaddaannii18h ago

So other primates in the ape family. The same one humans are from.

I agree some apes have them but not other non-primate animals.

It’s likely we evolved ours for speech and emotion communication.

I still think it’s weird that we have them. A big pink noodle ring around the mouth.

Show threadParagone1d ago

Someone pointed-out that Black people have pale skin on the insides of their hands, same for people of India…

& that at night, in a tribal village ( without electric lighting… ) that would make communication Italian-style, with gestures, work MUCH better…

Enough-so, that if there were any proto-humans who didn’t have that pale-gesturing-skin on them, they … apparently didn’t survive the last few million years of Natural Selection…

The more dimensions of immersion/communication, the more effective the immersion/communication.

Nintendo made a mint on that, when they ignored the higher-graphics-resolution paradigm that their competitors were working on, to instead add-in motion/gesture, & the immersion-multiplication that that provided…

More dimensions is a fundamental advantage!

Perhaps if you ever get into a discussion with someone who’s deaf-enough that they lip-read, instead of hearing you, you’ll discover/feel how disturbing/“wrong” it is, to have no eye-contact, when discussing something…

But the fact that they can discuss things with one even though they can’t hear well what one’s saying … that, too, is natural-selection advantage, through our ancestors…

Sometimes the flourishes that evolution produces are directly-significant ( like the items I’ve listed above ) & sometimes evolution produces negative-flourishes, like male-pattern-baldness ( after youth, male-attractiveness becomes irrelevant?, as far as evolution is concerned? genetic-reproduction’s already settled, then, right? )

_ /\ _

Show threaddaannii18h ago

Well humans used to have significantly shorter lifespans so that has to be considered with evolution.

Even though a lot of people use eye contact when speaking 1 to 1. It’s not used as much at farther distance and multiple group speaking.

Eye training research shows that we often glance at the mouth often when someone is speaking even if we don’t realize it.

We also can see things in our Peripheral vision that are used in processing but we are not as aware of it.

There was some interesting studies done around covid regarding non-transparent mouth covering and verbal communication.

Show threadtreadful1d ago
Have you seen genitals though? Now that’s some weird stuff.
Show threaddaannii18h ago
Yeah . Both sets are super weird. I can’t even…
Show threadScubus10h ago
No :(
Show threadProfessorozone17h ago
What’s so weird about a gasket. What SHOULD be there?
Show threadleadore17h ago

Batfish: “Yes! It is indeed my lips that make me feel self-conscious.”

[alt-text since Lemmy web UI doesn’t seem to have a way to add it to the image: photo of a red-lipped batfish. Besides its bright red lips, its head has a large protruding bulge, it and stands and walks on its four leg-like fins instead of swimming like a normal fish.]