# What are the evolutionary advantages to touching one's own face? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 27, 2009, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528 "2009-04-27T18:12:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/21 "2009-04-28T14:34:48Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > Isn’t it just a trifle silly that this is noted in essentially every thread concerning evolution? Reason or purpose, as the OP title makes clear, in this context refers to evolutionary advantage - something that improves reproductive success. No, it’s not silly. The majority of characteristics are neither an evolutionary advantage nor a disadvantage. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/22 "2009-04-28T14:47:56Z")
Apparently a Dr. Friedrich Bischinger thinks that [picking one’s nose](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nose-picking) strengthens the immune system. Research opportunities into the health benefits of zit popping remain _ahem_ untapped. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/23 "2009-04-28T15:06:56Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > It seems to me that there would be advantages in being able to put food in your mouth, blow your nose, and get little foreign objects out of your eyes, and having hands able to touch the face makes all of that easier. But it’s all part of being able to touch almost any part of the body (except the middle of the back), and being able to keep it clean and fix minor injuries on the body, which again seems to me evolutionarily useful. This is the best explanation here. Look at the behaviors of other animals. Dogs and cats use forepaws to clean their faces. Even cows use their tails to keep insects away. Evolution doesn’t create dozens of traits. It allows for an action, in our case probably putting food into our mouths. Once that action has been established animals find other ways to exploit that action. If we can touch our faces then… Then we can swat insects. We can wipe away tears and sweat. We can rub our eyes when they get tired. We can blow our noses, clean our ears, arrange our hair, pluck our eyebrows, pierce our tongues. None of these necessarily have anything to do with reproductive status. They’re outgrowths of one crucial step taken at some point in the past, one that is associated with creating more offspring, that of food gathering. Once you’re beyond that everything is equal. Nobody would ask whether our ability to pierce our earlobes has an evolutionary advantage. Philster is right and Xema is wrong. We need to stop asking the question in this manner because it creates a false framework for thinking about the issue. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/24 "2009-04-28T15:18:50Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > None of these necessarily have anything to do with reproductive status. They’re outgrowths of one crucial step taken at some point in the past, one that is associated with creating more offspring, that of food gathering. Once you’re beyond that everything is equal. Nobody would ask whether our ability to pierce our earlobes has an evolutionary advantage. Philster is right and Xema is wrong. We need to stop asking the question in this manner because it creates a false framework for thinking about the issue. That’s essentially what I was getting at with my cucumber up the ass comment. You may have been slightly more explicit. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/25 "2009-04-28T16:07:44Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > That’s essentially what I was getting at with my cucumber up the ass comment. You may have been slightly more explicit. More explicit than a cucumber up the ass? Heaven forfend! 🙂 I cited Giles because his was better but your comment is certainly along the same lines. Once we have an ability for X, we can do Y, Z, A, and pi if we feel like it, whether or not it makes any evolutionary or even rational sense. ---
**Author:** ![HorseloverFat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@HorseloverFat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HorseloverFat)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/26 "2009-04-28T16:08:21Z")
\*The majority of characteristics are neither an evolutionary advantage nor a disadvantage. \* This is worth repeating. Not to mention everything is a trade-off. The ability to put food in your mouth with your hands is probably better than eating like a dog. The ability to be able to wipe dust from your eyes is worth the extra chance of getting the flu. Not to mention, young healthy people have strong immune systems. By the time youre worried about getting pneumonia from touching your face chances are youve already reproduced, thus evolution steps out of the picture. Youve already passed your genes. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/27 "2009-04-28T16:23:42Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > The majority of characteristics are neither an evolutionary advantage nor a disadvantage. And nothing about my post implies that they are. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/28 "2009-04-28T16:27:42Z")
> [@Philster](#): > > There isn’t a reason or purpose for anything evolutionarily (if that is a word). > [@Xema](#): > > Isn’t it just a trifle silly that this is noted in essentially every thread concerning evolution? The reason it’s constantly brought up is that the related suite of beliefs that evolution operates in a direction, anticipates need, or has some purpose has been a very pernicious and long-lasting misunderstanding among the public at large. We still see traces of this kind of thinking cropping up frequently, even among the educated. On a board dedicated to fighting ignorance, this remains one of our most durable and aggressively-promoted enemies. Perhaps it is overkill to bring it up every time, but its tendency to creep into or outright derail discussions keeps it on our minds during most conversations about evolution and natural selection. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/29 "2009-04-28T16:28:51Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Philster is right and Xema is wrong. We need to stop asking the question in this manner because it creates a false framework for thinking about the issue. My comment had nothing to do with the fact that many characteristics offer neither evolutionary advantage nor disadvantage. It pertained to the common use of the “purpose” analogy. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/30 "2009-04-28T16:33:55Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > The reason it’s constantly brought up is that the related suite of beliefs that evolution operates in a direction, anticipates need, or has some purpose has been a very pernicious and long-lasting misunderstanding among the public at large. We still see traces of this kind of thinking cropping up frequently, even among the educated. On a board dedicated to fighting ignorance, this remains one of our most durable and aggressively-promoted enemies. Perhaps it is overkill to bring it up every time, but its tendency to creep into or outright derail discussions keeps it on our minds during most conversations about evolution and natural selection. This is a very reasonable point. But my view is that the point is obvious to educated people, has been made many times and need not be brought up in every discussion (certainly not on this board). Surely we are secure enough in our knowledge of this that we need not constantly repeat it - what’s good enough for Richard Dawkins should be acceptable here. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/31 "2009-04-28T16:55:33Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > This is a very reasonable point. But my view is that the point is obvious to educated people, has been made many times and need not be brought up in every discussion (certainly not on this board). Surely we are secure enough in our knowledge of this that we need not constantly repeat it - what’s good enough for Richard Dawkins should be acceptable here. If that were true, we wouldn’t be seeing threads like this one. Or [this one.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=11085033) ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/32 "2009-04-28T17:54:29Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > And nothing about my post implies that they are. Your post supports the OP’s question as valid. The assumptions implication by the question are faulty. It’s not silly to point that out. Indeed, it’s essential. And the OP’s question was explicitly about evolutionary advantage. Whatever you meant by that digression on “purpose” was non sequitur. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/33 "2009-04-28T21:07:33Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > Your post supports the OP’s question as valid. How do you work that out? My post was a response to Philster’s statement that “There isn’t a reason or purpose for anything evolutionarily…” Are you saying that if I fail to endorse a certain criticism of the OP, I must be supporting the OP? > [@](#): > > Whatever you meant by that digression on “purpose” was non sequitur. My digression was prompted by the post that preceded it. In what way was I unclear? ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/34 "2009-04-28T21:12:53Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > Or [this one.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=11085033) I couldn’t find where the issue of purpose got misconstrued - or even mentioned - in that one. ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/35 "2009-04-28T21:33:20Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > Surely we are secure enough in our knowledge of this that we need not constantly repeat it - what’s good enough for Richard Dawkins should be acceptable here. Since when? Dawkins is neither the first nor the last word on evolution. It’s probably because he is considered so by many here that we _do_ have these sorts of questions all the time… ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/36 "2009-04-28T22:10:23Z")
This may be too far gone to bring back on track, but thank you for those who tried to answer my question in the spirit in which it was asked. To clarify again: I suggested that there were ways in which the human behavior of constantly touching the face should be evolutionarily maladaptive. I noticed that we do it a bunch. I wondered if there was some evolutionary advantage that the behavior conferred, ie, a reason that the trait is present. The “reason” could also be that it’s not sufficiently maladaptive to have been eliminated. I acknowledge that it’s not required that there be an advantage in order for the trait to exist. I’m interested in the claims that touching your mouth isn’t actually a big deal in terms of evolutionary fitness, but I’m not quite convinced. > [@Toxylon](#): > > Infectious diseases spread by “flu mechanisms” are a recent phenomena in the human realm, being side effects of animal husbandry and high-density human populations. In the big picture, people have been able to touch their faces all day long without contracting infectious diseases. Not anymore. I don’t know much about the history of infectuous diseases. Even if influenza and some other diseases are recent human contacts, there _have_ been deadly diseases around for much longer, and deadly diseases are more easily absorbed through mucous membranes, making compulsive touching one’s eyes, mouth, and nose risky at pretty much any point in human evolution, right? Isn’t one of the major advantages of of skin that it provides a barrier against infection? > [@HorseloverFat](#): > > Not to mention, young healthy people have strong immune systems. By the time youre worried about getting pneumonia from touching your face chances are youve already reproduced, thus evolution steps out of the picture. But aren’t the very young also very susceptible to disease? It seems like they’re also prone to touching their face constantly Little kids put everything, including hands and feet in to their mouths. Of course, that supports the hypothesis that touching your mouth a lot is part of a feeding instinct that should be strong in small children. ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2009, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/37 "2009-04-28T22:26:04Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > I’m interested in the claims that touching your mouth isn’t actually a big deal in terms of evolutionary fitness, but I’m not quite convinced. The fact that there are over _six billion_ of us, all touching our faces, and that our species’ population is still increasing, doesn’t convince you that it’s _not_ maladaptive? How, exactly, are you defining “maladaptive”? ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/38 "2009-04-29T00:16:51Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > Even if influenza and some other diseases are recent human contacts, there _have_ been deadly diseases around for much longer, and deadly diseases are more easily absorbed through mucous membranes, making compulsive touching one’s eyes, mouth, and nose risky at pretty much any point in human evolution, right? Isn’t one of the major advantages of of skin that it provides a barrier against infection? It’s more than influenza and some other diseases. As far as I’ve read, ALL epidemic diseases that are contagious in humans came from herd animals relatively recently (probably within the last 10,000 years). This is because an epidemic disease runs through a small population very fast, killing some and immunizing enough survivors that it cannot exist as a reservoir of infectious microbes. Until human population exploded with the development of farming and herding, ALL human populations everywhere were too small and fragmented to support significant epidemic diseases, so we simply didn’t have them. We had parasites, and we had other kinds of chronic diseases, just not the epidemic waves of infection. Epidemic disease instead existed in large herds or flocks of animals, where it could pass through the relatively enormous population over enough time that new, uninfected individuals would be born and come into contact with carriers to keep the cycle of infection going. When mankind began living in close proximity with herd animals, these epidemic herd diseases had opportunity to migrate into our growing population when random mutation favored it. Pretty much all the classic epidemic diseases are identified with an animal precursor. Rinderpest in cattle became measles in humans; influenza in poultry and swine became human flu; cowpox became smallpox; bubonic plague came from rats; mumps from cows and pigs; and so on. So the answer is, for most of human history, you couldn’t catch a communicable infection by wiping your mouth because no such thing yet existed. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/39 "2009-04-29T03:53:50Z")
> [@Darwins\_Finch](#): > > Dawkins is neither the first nor the last word on evolution. It’s probably because he is considered so by many here that we _do_ have these sorts of questions all the time… So you think he isn’t reliable on this subject? ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2009, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528/40 "2009-04-29T04:17:02Z")
What do you consider “this subject” to be? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-evolutionary-advantages-to-touching-ones-own-face/494528.md?page=3)