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Ear muscle we thought we didn't use except for wiggling our ears, flexes during focused listening


Still Waters

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If you can wiggle your ears, you can use muscles that helped our distant ancestors listen closely. 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' auricular muscles are only vestigial. But now scientists examining the function of these muscles have discovered that they activate when we're trying to listen to competing sounds.

https://phys.org/news/2025-01-ear-muscle-thought-humans-didnt.html

New study: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2024.1462507/full

https://www.livescience.com/health/anatomy/vestigial-human-ear-wiggling-muscle-actually-flexes-when-were-straining-to-hear

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