OUR BEST FEATURES 



others have shown that the anthropoids (as usual) 

 are man's nearest hving relatives in the anatomy 

 of the facial muscles. The ability to move the 

 ears is already reduced in the anthropoids but 

 some men can still make a creditable showing of 

 activity in these souvenirs of man's earlier mam- 

 malian ancestors. 



In the lower primates the opposite upper lips, 

 Ipie those of carnivorous mammals, depend slightly 

 at the sides and are barely, if at all, joined in 

 front, but in the anthropoid apes and man the 

 median flap of the foetus, forming the philtrum of 

 the lip in adult man, becomes very broad, so that 

 the opposite halves of the orbicularis oris muscle 

 become broadly continuous. 



Thus the anthropoids acquired highly protrusile 



lips, useful in sucking up water and the juices of 



fruit (Fig. 70). Man has inherited from the 



primitive anthropoids the ability to draw hack his 



lips in anger, to open them in a laugh, or again, to 



protrude them into a funnel and so to confer kisses 



on the objects of his affection. How much dour 



literature, ancient and modern, might be lightened 



by this thought! 



All these muscles of the mouth and cheeks as 



133 



