Are Facial Expressions Universal?
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 963 Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2021
⏱️ 14 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about common ancestors shared by every human; evolution’s multiple directions; and universal facial expressions.
There's a point in the past when every person on Earth was an ancestor to every person alive today by Grant Currin
- Hershberger, S. (2020, October 5). Humans Are All More Closely Related Than We Commonly Think. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-more-closely-related-than-we-commonly-think/
- Hopkin, M. (2004). Human populations are tightly interwoven. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/news040927-10
- Numberphile. (2019). EVERY baby is a ROYAL baby - Numberphile [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm0hOex4psA
- Rohde, D. L. T., Olson, S., & Chang, J. T. (2004). Modelling the recent common ancestry of all living humans. Nature, 431(7008), 562–566. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02842
Evolution Doesn’t Have Just One Direction by Ashley Hamer
- Is the human race evolving or devolving? (1998, July 20). Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-human-race-evolvin/
- Waimanu, the first penguin. (2010, January 30). March of the Fossil Penguins; March of the Fossil Penguins. https://fossilpenguins.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/waimanu-the-first-penguin/
- Morber, J. (2016, October 6). 5 Times Evolution Ran in “Reverse.” Science; National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/reverse-evolution-explained-hagfish-penguins-snakes-science?loggedin=true
- Elliott, K. H., Ricklefs, R. E., Gaston, A. J., Hatch, S. A., Speakman, J. R., & Davoren, G. K. (2013). High flight costs, but low dive costs, in auks support the biomechanical hypothesis for flightlessness in penguins. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(23), 9380–9384. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1304838110
- How Birds Lost Their Teeth. (2014, December 12). Audubon. https://www.audubon.org/news/how-birds-lost-their-teeth
- The evolution of whales. (2021). Berkeley.edu. https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evograms_03
- How did whales lose their hind legs? - Popular Mechanics. (2006, May 23). Popular Mechanics. https://www.popularmechanics.co.za/science/null-610/
Are facial expressions universal? by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Jared in Vancouver)
- Price, M. (2016, October 17). Facial expressions—including fear—may not be as universal as we thought. Science | AAAS. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/facial-expressions-including-fear-may-not-be-universal-we-thought
- Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1971). Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 17(2), 124–129. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0030377
- Crivelli, C., Russell, J. A., Jarillo, S., & Fernández-Dols, J.-M. (2016). The fear gasping face as a threat display in a Melanesian society. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(44), 12403–12407. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1611622113
- Krys, K., Melanie Vauclair, C., et. al. (2015). Be Careful Where You Smile: Culture Shapes Judgments of Intelligence and Honesty of Smiling Individuals. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 40(2), 101–116. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-015-0226-4
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com. |
| 0:06.0 | I'm Cody Gough. |
| 0:07.0 | And I'm Ashley Hamer. |
| 0:08.0 | Today you learn about that time when every person on Earth was an ancestor to every person alive today, and why evolution doesn't |
| 0:15.8 | have just one direction. |
| 0:17.8 | We'll also answer a listener question about whether facial expressions are universal. |
| 0:22.0 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:24.0 | Lots of people can trace their ancestry many generations back. |
| 0:28.0 | But how far back would you have to go |
| 0:31.0 | before you found one ancestor who was related to everyone alive today. |
| 0:36.2 | A million years? A billion? Try 3,500 years ago. How can that be? Well the math gets a little tricky but the basic |
| 0:46.7 | idea is simple. You are one person. You have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, take that same pattern back 33 generations, |
| 0:58.0 | and you'd expect to be the direct descendant of more than 8 billion people. |
| 1:03.0 | That's the power of exponential growth, baby. |
| 1:06.0 | But that theoretical calculation has a big problem. |
| 1:10.0 | There have never been 8 billion people on earth at the same time. |
| 1:14.0 | The entire global population 33 generations back was about 300 million. |
| 1:19.0 | That's a measly 4% of the ancestors you supposedly had alive at the time. |
| 1:25.0 | So what's the deal? |
| 1:27.0 | It turns out that you have a bunch of ancestors who you're related to in multiple ways. |
| 1:32.0 | Maybe your great, great, great, great, grandmother on your grandfather's side was also your great, great, great aunt, |
| 1:38.0 | and was also your great, great, great, grandmother on your great-grandmother's side. |
... |
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