When people are trying hard to listen to something, the body seems to do its best to "prick up its ears," even though this ability was lost by our evolutionary ancestors millions of years ago. That's ...

If you hear something interesting, you might prick up your ears. That's a figurative expression, of course. People's ears don't actually move upward. But NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce found that this old ...

A revolutionary device could allow people with neurological conditions to communicate again using a tiny hidden ear muscle. The Earswitch device is being developed by a GP and a team of researchers at ...

A study shows that vestigial ear muscles activate when humans listen intently, mirroring how animals move their ears to locate sounds. Using electromyography, researchers found that these muscles ...

Most people never think twice about their ears, until they catch a strange little twitch they can't explain. It might happen after a sudden noise or while trying to focus on a distant sound. These ...

Learn more about the auricular muscles, which activate when we wiggle our ears, and apparently, when we listen to several sounds at once. They wiggle, though they don’t do much else. That’s what we’ve ...

Humans actually have vestigial muscles that activate when listening closely to something, even though people lost the ability to really move their... Your ears can't prick up, but your ear muscles ...

In almost every species, ear movement can be a clue that the animal is trying to pay close attention to something. When people are trying hard to listen to something, the body seems to do its best to ...