The Science of Beards

don't know. I'm staring at our producer right now, Noel, who has a wonderful beard. It's a good beard. It's a friendly beard. It's it's a coron. That was an awful pronunciation of very current. Um, it's a good it's a solid beard. But you know one of my favorite beerds of all time, a pretty gray Yes, this is the biogere intelligence. Yes, he has a straight, straight up wizard beard, a long beer that you look at it and you're like, this is a man with with wisdom.

This is a man um of experience that I can trust to help me live forever. Yeah, And you know what I kind of had wondered. You know, I think I made a comment before in another episode when we were discussing some of his ideas about living forever um. You know, there was this idea of, well, if he shaved his beard, would he look twenty years old or would he look a hundred and twenty. I don't know there's that much facial hair going on, Yeah enough to him my head. I don't know how old he is either,

so you can't even factor that into it. No, But after sort of looking at some of this research, I have a new view of Arportugray that I will discuss later on in the podcast because I don't want to give anything away. Okay, UM, it's interesting you sent this um this infographic around the trustworthiness of beards that ranks all these varying degrees of beards from from the very

trustworthy to be disastrous. And there's there's like a dozen of them on here, and uh, on the far end of the very trustworthy scape, we have like to the two beards that are closest to the end. One basically looks like Noel's beard and the other one looks like Aubrey grays beer. If you go on the other end of the spectrum, then you have to encounter a Hitler mustache and a pencil fin mustache. Say that pencil fan always says villain to me or John Water. I don't

think of John Waters as a villain. Well, I think a benevolent villain. I think he would would term himself at you know, possibly possibly he's a provocateur. But also funny on this particular infographic is that the the Hitler mustache and the John Waters mustache right below that is

a full werewolf. So I'm glad that hyperdricosis made the list. Yeah. Um, and I'll tell you one beerd There's so many great beards out there, um, so many great beards from science history alone, which I'm hoping we'll do a little gallery to go with this online. Now I have to mention before we launch into beer and we really look at the science be find them. Um that I feel like, in part we should owe this episode to your own facial hair. Yes, oh the sideburns, burns, You've got nice

chops there. Yeah, well let's they go from the sideburn level to the chocolate which I was I was looking at where those rank on this particular trustworthiness of beards and certainly the chops that the chops are a little more in the neutral zone, whereas the sideburns are are a little more towards the trustworthy side. So if I can actually, you know, go buy anything that this infograph has to say about the matter. Well, just as a side note, you have a great photo gallery sideburns of science,

sideburns of science. See, I'm thinking we'll do one about beards as well to go with this episode. One beard that I that I am seeing a lot of recently because I'm watching, um, the current season of Madman is the actor who plays the character Stan j R. Ferguson has this huge beard. I don't know if you're up

to that point. Yeah, And so illustrator yea, the illustrator massive beard, and uh, I was looking up I found an interview with him and he says that when he after he came in, um, you know, ready to do the show, grew out this beard that they wanted him to have for this season. He said it was actually a bit too much. It was like a cross between Jeremiah Johnson and Tom hankson Castaway, and they actually had to trim it down to its to the state that you see it in on that So so virile was

his beard. Yeah, I had to tame it back. You know what's interesting about that, and we'll get into this, is that as a character he he usually says some pretty loudish things, like loudish like um, you know, he says some inappropriate things, sexually charged, now clean shaven, super creepy. The beard I actually think softens that a bit. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, because yeah, he's he's a

far more levable character with the beard. Well, also you see a little bit more character development of him my fields the show progresses, so you know him a little better about it than me as the beard. But yeah, like earlier on you're like, who is this this guy's guy's kind of awful, and now you're like, this is one of the better gentlemen in the office. Yeah, you're right,

this guy's got personality. Yeah, and he I guess it's the only I can't think of any of other characters that current that are currently on the show that have a beard. So no, but there is a lot of facial hair going on for sure. No, let's look back here in the time machine at ancient Greece, where the beard was big, right, It was a sign of virility,

and it was an advertisement that you were not a Unich. Yes, because presumably or this was the thought actually that if you were a Unich, you wouldn't have the ability, would not have the hormones to produce that the massive glorious beards on your wisdom. And certainly in olden days various societies this was there were enough Unix around that this was actually something to think about. There actually a fair number of Unix plays, varying roles in society, sometimes very

important roles. Um. Which reminds me we do need to do an episode on Unix. Was that because the history of Unix and some of the science of Unix is is really, um, really fascinating. Um. But yeah, yeah, go back to the Greeks. The Greeks loved them, at least until Alexander the Great came along and he said, actually, we don't need beards. We need to shave these beards off if we're going into combat, because somebody could grab me by my beard and start slicing at my face exactly.

And I imagine that at some point too, if you are in a situation where you don't have access to clean water and so on and so forth, that that little beard could get quite contestive. Yeah, and certainly we've

been shaving beards for a while. Um, I mean we well before we were shaving beards, presumably we're you know, there were situations where one would pluck out the facial hair, especially if you if you weren't stay capable of growing like a full beard anyway, maybe you just decided to go clean cut on it, and you would be you would have to to plug at the hairs or find

out some of their methods. But we have found archaeological evidence dating back to one thousand BC of into dual shaving their beards clearly with some sort of flint instruments, you know, the first razors if you will. Indeed, um, it should not go unnoted that bearded ladies make appearances

throughout history, yes, right. Um. I wanted to point out that some of this is due to something called hair sudism, which is a variant of hypertrichosis, also known as the werewolf syndrome, when there's an abnormal amount of hair growth on the body. Uh. Though with hair sudism, it's usually due to increased levels of androgens. Or male hormones. Now, bearded ladies would show up in sideshow acts in the circus, right, or freak shows as they were called. Most of the time,

those weren't actually ladies. They were just dudes to put on a little with beards that put on a little makeup and address. Yeah, but that's been going on since Shakespeare's time, right, no ladies on the stage. Um. I also want to point out the cultural significance of the term beard, which is also slang for um, a person who is a cover for a gay friend or a partner. Yes, and apparently sometimes too, it would be a cover for somebody who's having an affair in a nixed gender situation

as well. Yeah. Yeah, although I would say that the actually i've heard it more used as a way to sort of negate someone's homosexuality. Public feel like that's the usage that sticks with us more these days. Yeah, it's sort of this idea that you could give this heteronorm appearance of a couple knowing that one of them was gay the other was not. Um, But I do I think it's fascinating because the term, again, when you're talking

about heteronorms, you talk about masculinity. And in the instance where there is a male who is gay who is with a woman, she the beard gives him masculinity. I'm not saying that she gives him real masculinity. I'm saying that from society's perspective, she's imbuing him with this power. But it always makes me anytime I hear of the term beard used in those scenarios, it makes me think of money. Python's the Life of Brian where there's a scene where someone someone's going to be stoned to death

and punishment for some sort of infraction. And and only the men are allowed to come and witness this, but only the women are really interested in attending it. So they're all buying these fake beards from a vendor outside the stoning area, and uh, and they're all, you know, there to participate. I love that bit because on so many different levels, I think it's a commentary society is. It's some wonderful commentary throwne in to what is still

a very silly sketch. But that's Python for you. All Right, Well, let's talk a bit about the evolution of the beard and this sort of powers I said that is imbued by this mass official hair. So needless to say, the beard grows on the face. And it's really interesting when you start thinking about the face, what is the human face, right, Because certainly it is a bunch of skull meat. It is uh, it's a place where we keep our eyes,

in our nose, in our mouth. So it's it's kind of this uh, front loaded sensory array that allows us to take in the sense world around us. But then it is also something a bit more too, It is also a communications array. Now, all this is complicated by the fact that, of course we end up thinking of our face as ourselves, right, like I am my face to a certain extent, or at least my face is an expression of who I am. Or you're saying that

some people allow how they look to color their personality. Well, people end up augmenting their face and to varying degrees. And the varying degrees may include, um, growing a beard, it may mean wearing makeup, It may mean piercings, it may mean tattoos, it may mean cosmetic surgery. All of these things are done because we see the faces an expression of who we are. But then the but then it's also tied in with the fact that the faces

a means of communicating. Um. Obviously, we make expressions. There seven primary expressions and then various um micro expressions that appear for just you know, fractions of a second and some of the best, Yeah, that allow you to get gains an insight into what's going on, what emotions are we feeling, what emotions are recovering. And there's actually a two thousand and eight check study that found that facial

expressions alone can speak a thousand words. So we get into this idea of the face is not just you know who we are, but but a means of communicating with other members of our society. And uh. And so there was another study that I found that plays into this sin. This is the two thousand and twelve study from a team of U. C. L a biologist, and they started thinking about the evolution of the human face and the evolution of the primate face and and how

does facial diversity UM factor into all of this. So they looked at a hundred and twenty nine different adult male primates from Central and South America, and the study included this great wheel that that graph that had all these different to monkey faces on and they arranged uh, pretty wildly there's you know, there there are some very conservative looking monkey faces that it is just like, oh, well that is that is a monkey. If you saw a picture of you be like, well look at that

monkey there is. And then others are you know, like crazy must red faced, mustachioed, you know, crazy eyebrow like you know crazy monkey pictures. Yeah, like very like punk rock monk monkeys. And so you would look at these and if you look at these thinking, um, all right, some of these monkeys are gonna be more solitary than others, and some are gonna be a little more society driven, a little more you know, social and prone to live

in in packs and small groups. Um. And so what is the correlation between facial complexity uh and uh and and social activity? As it turns out, the crazier the face on the primates in the study, the more solitary the monkey, whereas the planer faced monkeys were more likely to live in in some sort of a close knit

society and in a group of some courts sort. And so the theory here is that since our face is the communications of race, since our face is a means of communicating with other members of our species, the plane

or the faces, the better the communication system. It's in a large community, Yeah, it's like, you know, this is the poster that I'm going to use, or you know, this is the billboard I'm going to use to communicate with people, And the more graffiti I have on it, the you know, I have drapes up on it and all sorts of crazy stuff. It's it's getting in the way of my ability to use that to communicate the clearest. So the crazy faces they're standing out on their own

because they don't have to use this. But the planer faced monkeys, they're using this as a communication system. And it's like a like a satellite dish. If you want to pick up a signal, you want to have it cleaned off. You don't want to have a bunch of brush on it and drying clothes and what have you. Yeah, it makes total sense because if you are in a large community and you've got to read each other's facial expressions, than the plane or the face the easier to read.

But if you are just hanging out with one or two people, not a big deal to put on as much of the the makeup exactly nature's makeup as possible. Um. I do think it's really interesting in the human context because conservative estimates say that um communication is perceived by up I think upboards of six of nonverbal cues. Okay, so it would make sense that whatever is crossing your face is really going to inform another person about how

you feel, and particularly when you blush. I just looked at some research on blushing, and it turns out that the way that our vision is constructed, the cones in our eyes they think. Uh. Scientists and researchers think that it was constructed in a way that we could really see the variances in skin color and humans, so that we could perceive things like blushing as a subtle way of saying, oh this, you know, the person um across from me feels ashamed about this or regretful for doing something.

And again this plays into this idea of nonverbal cues letting us know what is truly going on between humans. So what does allays have to with facial hair? Well, if you dress up this canvas that you display your emotions, you are certainly trying to say something with your beard, or rather there are some subconscious things going on with the beard. Well, to a certain extent, you're growing a mask. You're growing this thing out of your face that covers

up you know, at least like half your face. It's so it's it's it can be used as a means of masking what you're actually feeling. Well, and I like this idea of uh putting on a mask of power to right. And if you look at the writings of Barnaby J. Dixon, he's a postdoctoral researcher in the Evolution and Ecology Research Center at the University of New South Wales. He has a lot to say on this topic. Um. He has a couple of different studies out right now.

And in fact, if you go to his website, he's at Dixon with an S by the way, d I X S O N. Does he himself of a beard. Yes, if you go to his website, not only will you see his glorious beard, which is um, you're not with a mustache, by the way, you will also be able to participate in a couple of online studies and see some images of people with beards or men with beards and then without beards, and go through the process of

rating them on their attractiveness. So let me get back to Barnaby, though uh In the paper published in Behavioral Ecology quote beards augment perceptions of men's age, social status, and aggressiveness, but not attractiveness. Dixon and Paul L. Vacy take a look at the power and structure of vis via beard and an abstract. He says, or they say, Darwin positive that beards evolved in human ancestors via female choice is a highly attractive masculine adornment. This is Darwin's theory. Yes,

this is they're saying. You know, Darwin put this out there, who himself had a big beard later in life after earlier in life having glorious beard. But they go on to say that they think it's not necessarily um an

element of attractiveness. Here is more of power. And he said that they show that women from two very different ethnic groups a group of women um that are Europeans from New Zealand and Polynesian women from Samoa, they don't rate bearded faces as more attractive than clean shaven faces. In fact, women from both of those groups judge bearded faces to be older and ascribe them higher social status

than men who are clean shaven. Yeah. I mean, of course, one of the things with all this, you have to take into account all the human complexity of any of this. You know, if you're in a society where the beard is more important and more established, and you know, that's gonna that's gonna weigh weigh in other things. Uh. But but most of the the studies that we were looking at here, they were we were seeing that the beard has a stronger role in intra sexual signaling than in

any kind of female mate preferences. In other words, guys, you're growing that beard because you have something to say to the other guys, not because or you know, you may you may think otherwise, but ultimately your beard is speaking to the other men. Well, and what's interesting about the Polynesian women and the women from New Zealand is that they then saw that men who were acting aggressively with beards were deemed to be more aggressive than the

clean shaven brethren. So there's this idea again that it's a sort of sort of suiting up a manning up and again assuming a power roll. And if you look at a paper by D. Caroline Blanchard which was published in Behavioral Neuroscience, UM, they begin to see the animal world being pulled in in the form of lions and their means. Yeah, yeah, you know, this was an interesting

study that you came across. And the idea here, the theory here is that all right, So why does the lion have a main because it looks cool because it's since the signal? Or does the lion have the main because all of this extra hair protects some some some very important parts of the neck and face. True, and she says that lions with prominent means are like men with beards, with the ideas that both began to grow facial hair at puberty. Both the main and the beard

helped the single out gender in a crowd. And um, yes, the beard, like the main, would give the wear a more imposing silhouette and serve to blunt any attacks. Yeah. Because one thing you have to to think about here too, if this theory holds up, you have to think about the way humans have it have evolved. Um, what are

natural weapons? Are natural weapons? Are fists? The first things we're using to hurt each other, you know, aside from you know, the the odd bite and maybe you know, you know, at some point someone realizes, hey, we can kick things too, But for the most part, we our

hands have evolved to punch people in the face. I did a blog in a video about this a while back, and the idea is that when you make a fist, and and certainly we are the only species that makes fists and punches other members of our species, or if you're lion nissa, maybe a wolf with your with your fist, when you make a fist, it's uh, you know, certainly you can hurt your hand still when you, you know, make contact, but it's structured so that you're actually protecting

a lot of the more fragile parts of the hand, the moans and muscles when when you ball up. So the idea here is that that we have we have evolved over time to use these as weapons. So in the course of evolution to it makes a certain amount of sense that we might also develop some sort of

protective feature against people punching us in the face. And then later in early developments, clearly some of our first weapons are going to be blunt instrument weapons as well, before we eventually get to where we're creating spears and swords and axes and you know, on up to our modern weaponry. Okay, so a lion who is being attacked the other lion who was attacking the line with a magnificent main would get a mouthful of hair, right, and it would be a little bit harder to get to

the throat region. So if you're talking about humans then striking each other on the chin, then you've got the beard that kind of buffers the impact of that, right right. And of course they don't really go into a mention in the study, but humans today are not above biting into the foe, son or an ear. Yeah, so I can only imagine that that would have played apart as well, indeed, I'm sure. And naturally Blanchard brings up something called the

glass chin phenomenon. She says it's well known in boxing and direct blows to the front and sides of the neck as well as the area just under the nose, can be particularly lethal, and that both are particular targets of attack and unarmed combat techniques, and that this is a protective feature of human beards, and that this is interesting. The technical and competition rules of the International Amateur Boxing

Association prohibit beards and boxing matches. So I'm assuming that's to level the playing field, right, I guess, because then you know, Otherwise someone with a particularly great beard is going to be that much more protective. Now, you don't see those rules if I'm not mistaken in mixed martial arts, because you do see bearded individuals partaking in combat there. I guess I mainly thinking of I only know older dudes, but like like Dan Severn, he had an awesome mustache.

I don't know that wasn't really protecting the jaw and neck, but but it seems like there are a few other bearded guys that were thrown down. Well, no, I'm just thinking about Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln of course describe the wrestler, and he had the beard going on for sure, macho man, Randy Savage, professional wrestler, but that he had a great beard, um,

you know. And it also ties in kind of interestingly with some other studies we're looking at where the theory was to that a large beard and also large eyebrows contribute to the way that the face is perceived and they make the jaw look stronger and more intimidating. Um and uh. And when you couple that with a brow, I can't help but think, like what you have. Peter Gallagher,

the actor who already had like amazing eyebrows. What if he had ever grown a beard, because I did a quick Google search and I never found an image of him with a beard, So I think missed opportunity. He could have been the ultimate alpha male. Well, but maybe he's doing that just for everybody's benefit. I mean, I bet that every time he furrows his brow that the earth trembles. Right, So if he were to grow a beard,

it could be catastrophe. It could be someone set him down once said Peter, you have amazing eyebrows, and that you must promise himust swear a blood oath and never to grow a beard. All right, let's take a break and when we get back, we are going to discuss why Billy nays Is beard made him the success that you are. All right, We're back, and uh, we said, we're going to talk about Billy Mays, the infomercial superstar,

the Pitchman. Pitchman. Yeah, um, a huge beard, I mean, glossy black beard, the fullest beard I think I've ever seen in my life. Not wizardy really, not like long, but very very thick and prominent. Right. Yeah, yeah, he was a pitchman for a bunch of different household cleaners, and I think that his beard contributed to his success.

And this is why A two thousand intense study in the Journal of Marketing Communications found that men with beards were deemed more credible than those who were clean shaven, and the study showed participant pictures of men endorsing certain products. Now, the products were kind of key to whether or not there was any correlation of increased trust. So it turns out that and then with beards had great We're seen as having greater expertise and more trustworthy when they were

hawking things like cell phones and toothpaste. Okay, so they were doing much better than the clean shaving guys in that area, but not tidy Whitey's huh. Okay uh. Participants preferred clean shaven. Then when it came to underwear, I was thinking, perhaps it's subconscious the association of you know, a lot of hair with underwear. And I know we're getting into mercan territory here, but that might have something to do with it. And I've never thought about this before,

about who do I prefer selling the underwear? U. I guess I would prefer someone without a beard, um, but but not so much. I mean, I guess it comes down to if are you talking about an underwear model or just an underwear pitchman, and is the pitchman wearing Um, I think that they were talking about the pitchman as the model. Okay, well I would, I guess, or maybe

that's a good question, that's a very good question. Well maybe I'm just more attractive to beardless guys, because I would I would want to be sold by underwear by you know, they beardless underwear model, but a man with a beard who is selling the underwear. But on the package there was a clean shaven man. And now remember the why is the bearded man there at all? Is he the other underwear models fathers in a department store. He has a stack of underwear, and he is next

to the clean shaven pitchman. They're both trying to sell you underwear. I don't know that. Now, that's just a tough decision. I'm going to go with a clean shaven because I still stand by that. I think it's something subconscious about a lot of hair and underwear. And then other regions you may have something there. Somebody needs to do a study. Clearly, there are enough people researching beards and what beards mean. There's got to be room out

there and some available funding. Let's get out of this uncomfortable territory and into beards and how they can contribute to one's health. Yes, now this is pretty awesome. This uh, this is some relatively new uh info that we have to work with here two thousand twelve study, UH French study.

And they had an interesting theory here. All right, so we're growing these beards, and we've talked about how the beard, of course may provide some amount of protection against punches to the face, how the beard may mask our ability to communicate via our our facial features with the members of our species make us a little more aggressive than we actually maybe, but then to what if, to what degree could they possibly be shielding us from horrible U V ray? So this study decided to test it out.

So what they what do they do? They went and they bought three mannequin heads, put them out in the sun. On one of them they just left it beardless. On the other they gave it a short beard, you know, mild beard. And then the other one they gave it long beard, big, long, thick beard. To see how these mannequins are affected by the u V rays based on their level of facial hair, and they found that beards

block of uv UV rays. Yes, okay, so of course that would reduce your exposure to those rays and decrease your chances of having skin cancer. Yeah, so a huge health benefit, right, Yeah, And certainly it brings me back to the you know, Tom hankson Castaway and he's getting baked by the sun and growing that beard was probably his only real choice at the time, but he you know, it worked out for the best because it probably gave him just a leg a little leg up on avoiding

skin cancer. Yeah. So, I mean you can see how this would be a protective cover throughout the ages, right. Yeah. If you're you're making your your life on the beach out in the sun, maybe you should grow a beard. Maybe that would help because you think about it that you think of like a picture you've seen of particularly

I'm thinking of like snowboard borders and the like. You know, they'll have have the big beard and then they'll have the big goggles and then the hat and that's basically yet all you have to do is worry about the nose. And if you were to wear say a pair of you know, gradual Marx glasses or humpy hump glasses. On top of that, you would have complete coverage and while what image you would be projecting, Yeah, pretty faculty, especially if you went with the humpy hump up nose and

you know glasses instead. You know, I was thinking about the study in the mannequin heads, and I was thinking about them in a field, and I immediately began to imagine instead of body farms, we would have these mannequin head farms, various growth patterns of facial hair on them, and how disturbing that might be to walk up upon and say, oh, well, you know, I've been I've been watching the new Hannibal Electric TV show, which there are things I really like about it. Um. I think that

the acting is great. I think the look of the show is great. I'm I'm less into some of the writing and the monster of the week scenario that they have. So each episode seems to have to have a new crazy invented serial killer. Yeah, they're gonna eventually start running to start running out of ideas though, So I think this could be one a killer who's who is inspired

by this survey. I mean, this study and finds the heads of clean shaved, mildly bearded, and super bearded men and then cut their heads off and leaves them out in the field. Oh, like a researcher who was like, you know, it's not enough to see what you know, chemically based substance would absorb in terms of the sun's UV rays. I want the real thing. Yeah, I don't want any polymer in the subject. And so therefore I'm going to take this study to the you know, the

inst degree in terms of I was going to the integrity. Yeah. And also not really, this would be a great mad scientist too, because we're used to models of mad scientists where they get into morally ambiguous territory. They or they start using human test subjects. But but generally they're trying to go for something big. But you know, this would be a great one because it's this is some low hanging fruit. There's really no reason to go cutting the heads off of people for it. But hey, they're mad,

that's what they do. Yeah. And if you for some reason, if maybe you skipped ahead in the podcast and you just got to this part doing that, why are you listening to podcasts that way? That's not you're not going to get a full spectrum there of information. Uh but yeah, this this is just an a marriage imaginary circumstance here. Yeah, but nobody is cutting off heads to really see what

the UV absorption example is. But if you if you look up any of the articles about this study, you do get to see a picture of these three mannequin heads with their beards out in the middle of the sunny field, and it's, uh, it's a little creepy. Alright. Well, researchers barn and B. J. Dickson, our friend that we mentioned before, and Robert C. Brooks photographed ten men at four stages of beard growth. We're talking about clean shaven, five day light stubble, ten day heavy stubble, and then

fully bearded. Okay. Then they took three hundred and fifty one women and one hundred and seventy seven men, had them view photos and rate each face for attractiveness, masculinity, health, and parenting ability. Here's the deal. Women ranked heavily stubbled faces as the most attractive. Really, so that just that just that level of I'm sort of growing a beard. I think they think it's really sexy, but they don't

know how itchy it actually is. I think maybe it's where it's it's full enough, not quite a full grown beard, but uh, grown out enough where it starts to soften. I'm gonna guess because that didn't that also, yeah, because also isn't like really scratchy. It's like a burliopath. It's the worst. It seems like it's bad for everyone. It's gonna scratch the woman's face and then the man is itching like crazy and thinking, why am I trying to

grow a beard again? This is why I shaved every couple of days, although I'm sure for women there there are some exfoliation benefits. Um. Okay, So participants said that the clean shaven men the participants meaning the men and the women, thought the clean shoven men looked about as healthy and attractive as those with a full beard, but they raided the bearded men higher for perceived parenting skills.

That was fascinating. Light stubble got the shaft, like, yeah, just in general, so if you've got some white stubble, um, you got the short of the step. Here. When I say light stubble, that's that five day growth not quite there kind of spotty. Yeah, uh yeah, low scores exactly like are you hungover? Are you what are you doing here? Is there your homeless Well, although homeless beards can grow to a great volume. So anyway, those are the results

of that particular study. Interesting. Um, yeah, And it's one of those things where it gets so complicated when you start thinking of beards, as you know, from from a purely biological standpoint, and then from a cultural standpoint, and then when we factor other things on top of it,

because sometimes people will grow a beard. Is again part of that idea that I am changing or I want to change who I am, and I'm going to make an outward show of this, uh and somehow tell the world that I'm doing something, you know, like because somebody will go through uh, you know, like a bad breakup and then maybe they'll shave their head or they'll grow out of beard, you know that that kind of thing. Um. So,

so it gets complicated with humans. Well, it's just Sampson And although right didn't right when when he was clean shaven, it was gone. Well then that goes into some very old ideas. I was looking. I was reading in the Brewer's Dictionary phrase and fable about the beards, and um, you know, various cultures, there are all sorts of sayings about like you know, if you take grab somebody about a beard, it's like the ultimate insult. And it certainly if you if you cut someone's beard, then it's just

the just an enormous upfront in in varying beard heavy cultures. Yeah, alright, So just as as a little mental abstract here, think about Zach galifin Nakis if he were to shave his beard, how would you perceive some of his characters who have been childlike? Uh, would get into creepy territory? Or is it? I mean, does the beard kind of helped him negate some of the weirdness of those characters. I mean, it's

such a part of his look. It's it's I don't know that I've ever seen a picture of him without it. I was thinking that too, Yeah, but but I think maybe it does. It does contribute to the act um fear to shave his beard off. I don't know how I would take it. I mean, also some you know, some faces just work better with a beard. I think that's it goes without saying true. Um, this is one

of the little tidbit that I found. I thought was really interesting, and it is that some men who grow out a beard or a mustache are surprised that their facial hair is ginger colored. Oh, they're surprised if they're not red headed, right, And that is because facial hair allows expression of the normally recessive jeans for red hair and very red skin. Interesting son pop up in those areas of your face, but not on your head. Well, and then of course it's a lot of times it

will grow out gray when you don't. Isn't really doing that, and we'll reveal your secrets. And then the rare individual will have the blonde beard, which I've always found kind of fascinating because in a in a way it's almost invisible. At first, I think of that as a very California beard. Yeah, there was a dude in my high school. I don't remember his name, but this is a high school, and he had like a full blonde beard. It was very impressive,

I'm sure. Yeah. Alright, so here's some interesting research for you guys to ponder out there. But just to be clear, this is not a free pass to grow a Gangs of New York style handlebar mustache. Well, you know, that's that's gonna be pretty treby in some areas. I mean, walk into Brooklyn with that and gets the right in. I just feel like that's best left to Daniel day Lewis. Well, oh, you're right some people. I you know, I'm sorry, I should probably not uh tell someone not to do that. Well,

the thing about just a very specific choice. Well, the mustache isn't is an interesting bit of facial hair because it really almost seems like there's you got to take it out a case by case situation. There are people who grow a mustache and you're like, that was absolutely the right call. Or they shave off their mustache and you're like, that is wrong. Grow it back, um, Jimmy Buffett, because you just don't look right without it. Um. So yeah, it's really gotta be a case by case It's true.

Perhaps it's just my association with Bill the Butcher, Like if I see that mustache, I think there's a bit of a menace to it. Yeah, it's a menacing mustache for sure. Um alright, so there you go. Um. I can't help but think though about some animals with facial hair, and I was thinking that Grumpy Cat would totally sport whole Cogan. You think the whole Cogan beard, which which mustache? The mustache he for a while and maybe he still

has this. He had the blonde mustache, and then but then he had stubble, a stubble beard that was dyed black. So it was it was, you know, the combo diabolical. Well, there's also an older image I found of him once where he in this when he had a different moniker. I think, but um, he had he was not waxing his chest and he but he did have a heart

shaved into this chest. So hairy chest except for the shape of a That is the ultimate act of hyper masculinity right there, right like I have such a hairy chest that I can now actually assume some femininity here in my expression of emotions. He a heart? Yeah, well, there are a lot of There are a lot of interesting manscaping choices in the world of pro wrestling. I tell you a beard we didn't mention. Have you seen

the Hunger Games movie? I have you know the West Bentley beard that he has in that with all the flames and that one is that one's one to think about. I'm not sure where I stand on that. I guess it's the future. So all right, well, there you go. There's a little insight into the science of the beard. Uh. There are a lot of cool studies out there, and we highlighted some of the more interesting ones we think.

But if you've come across anything, let us know. There's always new science brewing, uh, growing to the surface and uh. And also we'd love to hear your thoughts about beards in your life, your own beard, if you have one, how do you feel it alters the value proposition of of you the human? How does it alter your interactions with those around you? Or if you are you're not bearded, or even if you are, then then then how do you take in the beards in your life or in

popular media or in fiction? What are some of the best beards? What are some of the worst. We'd love to hear from you. Let us know. You can find us all over the place. Our main website, of course, is Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, but we're on Facebook where we are Stuff to Blow your Mind. We're also stuff to Blow your Mind on Tumbler, were below the Mind, on Twitter and on YouTube. Our channel is minds Stuff Show. And if you want to tell us a little story, about how you are perceived with

or without a beard. If you've had the experience of both, you can always send us a note at below the mind at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.