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 ...

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 ...

Vestigial human ear muscles react to sounds even if the external ear does not move. This could be used to build better earing aids. If you hear something interesting, you might prick up your ears.

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 ...

Sound dampener Chewing, talking or singing might potentially help protect your hearing, suggests an Australian researcher. These simple actions may activate the tiny muscles in your ear to muffle loud ...

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 ...

Chewing, talking or singing might potentially help protect your hearing, suggests an Australian researcher. These simple actions may activate the tiny muscles in your ear to muffle loud sounds, says ...