That relentless scratching. Every pet parent knows the sound – the constant thump of a dog’s leg against their ear (and the ...

Research conducted at the University of Saarland in Germany has found that humans also have the ability to move their ears in response to sound. Robert Wiederheim, a German anatomist active in the ...

The authors reasoned that many similarities between the appearance of cartilage under the microscope for zebrafish gills and human ears cannot be just a coincidence. Knowing that both the gills ...

Tens of millions of years ago, our primate ancestors responded to noises in much the same way many other mammals do, pricking their ears and deftly turning them towards the sound's source. While a few ...

Scientists previously thought the muscle used to wiggle your ears was essentially useless. But new research has found it activates when humans are listening carefully to something. Lots of animals ...

As humans grew more proficient with visual and vocal systems, the evolutionary pressure to move their ears ceased. This caused the auricular muscles to become vestigial, scientists thought.

An older man presses his fingers to the side of his head, next to his ear. To test whether humans still use auricular muscles — which once helped move our primate ancestors’ ears to funnel sound — ...

The muscles that enable modern humans to wiggle their ears likely had a more important job in our evolutionary ancestors. . | Credit: Khmelyuk/Getty Images The little muscles that enable people to ...

These auricular muscles helped change the shape of the pinna, or the shell of the ear, funneling sound to the eardrums. Millions of years ago, our ancestors stopped using them, so humans ...

From rawpixel.com via Freepik Tens of millions of years ago, our ancestors could swivel their ears to pick up sounds, much like cats and dogs do today. Humans lost that ability over time ...