Wait untill you see the whites of their eyes!

"Wait untill you see the whites of their eyes!", is the iconic battle cry of the commander under siege as the attackers come in mass upon the fort, circle of wagons or up the hills toward his men.

Strangely, the large whites of the eyes in human where designed to help us cooperate.

Recent research at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology discovered that unlike chimps and apes who look at head movement, children pay more attention to eye movement.
Apes and chimps need to mask where they are looking looking from other primates and thus do not have those bright whites of the eyes. Anthropologist Brain Hare says primates who do not have bright whites can hide where they are looking from others so they can, "...eat it, mate it, or chase it," I am thinking the chasing might come first, but I digress.

Humans however have evolved the bright whites of the eyes to contrast with our baby blues Iris and dark pupils so we can easily see the direction of another person's gaze.
The theory is that the advantages of understanding and cooperation received through mutual gaze outweigh a having a poker face. This is particular useful to me as I am not a great poker player, but boy can I read that body language.

I think this also interesting if your apply all the information we get subconsciously from eye gaze and brain function. That is the science of NLP. Which I have blogged about previously. I love that we were designed to create mutual gaze. If your interested in the whites of the eyes research pick up this months Scientific American Mind. Just another fun body language fact.

Oscar body language Tom and Katie

The most interesting part of the photo is how he is holding her hand tightly and high up close to his waist as if she is a little child in a super market who might get away. He is truly showing he is concerned she might get away from him. And she is standing fully away from him except for that hand. She is creating her own individual space. It's nice to see her in her own individual bubble rather than close and pulled into Tom like she has been. She is the most poised and relaxed I have seen her in over a year. Though her bowled and drooped down shoulders indicated she has been carrying a lot emotional weight. I mean, really a lot of weight, it is rather sad to see. Interesting that he is looking at the screen rather than doing his old "I'm looking at the camera" focus.
I found his Oscar presentation fascinating he was holding his hands together in a steeple which is a position men go into to gain control of themselves and looked poised and he was so very still and his voice strained to stay low and unemotional. His smile was even very small and a little tight. It was the anti Oprah show jumping on the coach body language.