Eli5: How come all animals look like each other (ex. You won’t tell the difference between 2 squirrels) but humans differ so heavily? Why do humans have so many unique facial an body features?
In: Biology
* You have *years* of practice in telling *humans who live around you* apart. You learned what’s the same in everyone and what features change, and you use those features to tell people apart.
* We don’t all give the same weight to the same features. Hence some people will claim that a brother-sister duo look incredibly similar (“I immediately knew you must be siblings”) while to you they might seem completely different.
* You don’t even need to go to squirrels. We are not trained on people we don’t see often, hence the stereotype that to most westerners all people from east Asia look the same. They really can *look* alike, because you need to look at a different set of features than the ones you are trained to use.
* If you spend enough time with animals, you will absolutely learn to tell them apart, too. They also have all those unique features, you just didn’t spend any time yet learning them.
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