When Connie Culp came out to reveal her face transplant, she pleaded with the public to realize she’s "not a monster." Obviously Culp knows people don’t think she’s a monster, but that doesn’t stop them from staring, something that no doubt causes Culp a vast amount of anxiety. Well, the gawkers aren’t simply being rude — they’re being human.

Facial expert Erika Rosenberg explains that humans are genetically conditioned to stare at extraordinary faces. Humans are programmed to read faces and assess their threat. If a face doesn’t fit into a "normal" criteria, we become transfixed: "We stare," explains Rosenberg at Wired. "Even if you don’t want to, even if your better judgment tells you ‘I need to be nice to this person. They’ve obviously suffered a tragedy,’ there’s something so alien and uncomfortable — it just doesn’t look like us. It goes back to a very primal thing.”

Rosenberg, who works at UC Davis’s Center for Mind and the Brain, continues, "When a face is distorted, we have no pattern to match that. All primates show this [staring] at something very different, something they have not evolved to see. They need to investigate further. ‘Are they one of us or not?’"

Still, survival or not, it’s impolite to stare, so try to keep it to a minimum.