Today, at the grocery store, I spied a child watching me intently from the shopping cart her mother was pushing. The little girl tensed her mouth into a caricature of a grin, and I responded with a similar grimace, raising my eyebrows to widen my eyes. She copied me, and stuck out her tongue.Have you noticed how young children go through a period where they make "play faces," as if they are practicing for adulthood? Bonobos, too, make goofy faces as captured here in an old postcard from the Antwerp Zoo in Belgium, one of the centers of European bonobo study.
It seems to me that young apes use their faces to experiment with their emotions while determining the reactions that this has on others. As they grow up, they learn to use the codified expressions accepted by their society.
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