Eyebrows are all the rage right now with a variety of beauty and health tips stemming from almost every beauty enthusiast but eyebrows have weird facts that a lot of people do not know.

People spend a lot of time and money maintaining their eyebrows which include waxing to plucking to threading to filling them in. Most people, however, don’t know just why we have these arched patches of hair on our foreheads in the first place or what purpose they serve.

Here are 5 weird facts you didn't know about your eyebrows.

1. Eyebrows actually help you see

The real function of eyebrows is to keep moisture out of our eyes when it’s raining or when we sweat. That arched shape helps divert liquid to the side of our faces, keeping the eyes clear.

2. There is a lot of hair

The average person has about 250 hairs per eyebrow. However, some reports show that never-plucked brows can have as many as 1100 total hairs.

Read Also: The weird elongated head trend of the Mangbetu people

3. Brows have a lifespan

The average lifespan of an eyebrow is four months, meaning the time it takes for each hair to fall out and new growth to fill in.

4. They are important for facial recognition

A study found that people had more trouble correctly identifying the faces of people they knew when they were presented with images of them missing their eyebrows. Researchers concluded that brows may be more important for facial recognition than eyes themselves.

5. Beautifying eyebrows has a long history

When you pluck and define our brows, you are actually taking part in a long history of facial grooming. Every culture and time period has had a different way of shaping their brows. For example, in Florence during the Renaissance, people shaved their eyebrows off completely, while the colonial elite in 18th-century America preferred to beef their brows up using grey mouse skin.