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Human Faces 'Share Important Features' With Chimp Butts, Flattering Study Finds

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All this time, calling someone "butt face" was a compliment.

While the rest of us are busy scrolling through our Instagram explore pages for memes to send to people we're flirting with so they'll be tricked into thinking we are funnier and more intellectually experimental than we are, scientists are out there – in labs or whatever – getting paid to think about hot pink chimp asses.

Yeah. Jobs are weird.

A study published in "PLOS One" – a science journal that, uh, publishes stuff like this – found there is probable evolutionary correlation between chimp buttocks and human faces.

As the study puts it,

The human face, with its distinct features such as eye-whites, eyebrows, red lips and cheeks signals emotions, intentions, health and sexual attraction and, as we will show here, shares important features with the primate behind.

Human beings have proven to be extremely good at categorizing and reading both faces and facial expressions.

As New York Magazine points out, there is a specific part of the brain that's been designed just for facial recognition. It's called – as I'm sure you care – the fusiform face area.

This study proposes primates – specifically chimps – have similar cognitive prowess when it comes to each other's butts.

We hypothesized that chimpanzees process behinds configurally in a way humans process faces.

The tests they ran are actually pretty amazing. They had humans try to recognize both faces and chimp butts, both right side up and upside down.

Humans were much better able to tell the faces apart when they were flipped, but less able to tell the butts apart.

PLOS

But when they did the same test using chimps, they had the opposite results.

[It is an] indicator that chimpanzees are adapted to recognize each other by their rear ends.

The study reminds us when a female chimp is ovulating, her butt turns red and gets engorged, thus signaling it is time to mate.

They have a "socio-sexual evolutionary purpose."

Basically, chimps read butt signs for the same reason we read face signs: to know whether someone might be interested in mating.

In fact, these scientists think as we evolved away from primates, the attention paid to butts shifted to faces. But both processes use similar brain visual recognition mechanisms.

[They are] two hairless, symmetrical and attractive body parts, which might have attuned the human brain to process faces, and the human face to become more behind-like.

As New York Magazine concisely puts it, "Your face may have evolved to resemble the ass of your ancestors."

What did I take away from all this? Kissing is basically pressing butt holes together.

Have a good day.