Humans are the only animals whose faces redden with embarrassment. Should we see that as an affliction, or as a blessing?
‘Blushing is the most peculiar and most human of all expressions,” Charles Darwin once wrote, and he wasn’t wrong. Though certain species of bird pinken up as a means of communication, and uakari monkeys have red faces when in good health, we seem to be the only animal that flushes as a sign of embarrassment.
“It’s a very truthful signal,” says Prof Sophie Scott, the director of the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. “It’s not fakeable, and there aren’t many things that humans do that fall into that category. You can’t blush on command.”
