When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The muscles that enable modern humans to wiggle their ears likely had a more important job in our ...

Medically reviewed by John Carew, MD Key Takeaways Pain behind the ear can happen due to infections, nerve issues, or jaw problems.Occipital neuralgia causes sharp pain that can occur when you ...

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.

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 ...

Francesca has an MSci in Biochemistry from the University of Birmingham.View full profile Francesca has an MSci in Biochemistry from the University of Birmingham. Thought to be pretty redundant in ...

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 ...