Lips

If eyes are a window to the soul, lips may just be a framework to our character - Hana Hong

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Evolution: Why do we have lips?

They kind of flap around on the front of your face, get dried out and chapped in the winter, and occasionally get caught up between your teeth and mistaken for food. Seriously, what good are lips? Birds get on just fine without them, turtles' lips have hardened into beaks as well, and while most mammals have lips, we humans are in a class all our own having lips that are permanently turned outwards.

It turns out that lips are quite important; so important, even, that it seems worth the risk of having your bottom lip caught in between your chompers. Even though that can really hurt. Using our lips to suck is one of the very first skills we have after we're born. In fact, it's so fundamental…

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Featured

Tech Companies Are Training AI to Read Your Lips

First came facial recognition. Now, an early form of lip-reading AI is being deployed in hospitals, power plants, public transportation, and more.

What Are Lips For?

One gets the sense it's not procreation...

What the Shape of Your Lips Says About You

If eyes are a window to the soul, lips may just be a framework to our character. See what face-reading science has to say about your personality, based on your pucker.

Articles of Interest

How to treat painful eczema on your lips

Whilst eczema on the skin and scalp is somewhat common, it can also affect the lips, where it's particularly uncomfortable and causes redness, dryness and flaking.

Lips are the most exposed erogenous zone, which makes kissing feel very good

Our lips are the body’s most exposed erogenous zone. Unlike in other animals, human lips are uniquely everted, meaning they purse outwardly. They are packed with sensitive nerve endings so even the slightest brush sends a cascade of information to our brains, which can feel very good.

Read my lips: what your voice reveals about you

From gender transition to asylum seeker applications, how you talk can mask or betray your true self. A new exhibition goes beyond class and geography to examine why the way we speak matters.

The research that's on everyone's lips

What do your lips say about you? Researchers have shown that every person's lip print pattern is unique, which makes them a useful tool in forensics - and women's are identifiably different to men's, too.

This is exactly what your lips are desperately trying to tell you about your health

You might pass off dry lips as nothing more than a mild annoyance but there might be a much deeper-rooted meaning. According to Ayurveda and other traditional modalities of medicine, the lips can actually help us gain an insight into the inner workings of the body.

This Is What It's Like to Read Lips

How do you use one sense to do the work of another? Can You Read My Lips? is a short film about the imprecise art of lip-reading based on the essay “Seeing at the Speed of Sound,” by Rachel Kolb, who narrates and stars in the video.

What causes dry lips, and how can you treat them? Does lip balm actually help?

People have been trying to figure out how to fix dry lips for centuries. Using beeswax, olive oil and other natural ingredients have been reported as early as Cleopatra’s time, around 40 B.C. In 1833, there were even reports of human earwax being recommended as a successful remedy for dry, cracked lips. Not long after, the first commercial lip balms hit the market.

What Your Lips Say About Your Personality

The secret to your true character isn't in your eyes after all. Expert Poppy King unveils the connection between your personal psyche and your pout.

Why are human lips red?

We use them every day, but have you ever stopped to consider that your lips do not look, feel or act like other parts of your body? Why are they so red, so sensitive and so prone to dryness? And why have humans evolved to have lips, when other creatures — birds and turtles, for example — get on just fine without them?