From “flaccid” earlobes to “ear food” and different shades of wax – 12 strange facts about your ears

IN OUR series about surprising facts about your body, it’s time to turn to a body part you can’t see on yourself, only in a mirror or in a photo.

Yes – it’s your ears!

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No matter how much you turn your head or move your eyes, you can’t really see them.

You use your ears every day, but have you ever stopped to think about how they might be involved in seemingly unrelated processes—like maintaining balance, feeling sick, and even eating?

From whether you really need to clean your ears to why some people’s wax is gray, here are 12 facts you didn’t know about your own ears.

1. Do your ears keep growing?

The outer ear is just one part of the auditory system, which is divided into the outer, middle, and inner ear.

The part you see on the outside has a medical term called the pinna.

It’s a common myth that your ears continue to grow throughout your life.

Once you reach adulthood and stop growing, your ears stop growing, but like other parts of your body, they can — and do — change as you age.

Your ears are made of cartilage and skin and the combination of the effects of aging and gravity essentially means that your earlobes start to droop, giving the impression that they are growing.

Add to that, the loss of facial fullness in the cheeks and lips means that the relative proportions of the face and ears change, but your ears don’t grow!

2. Some people can move their ears

If you observe a cat, it often appears to be moving its ears, trying to focus and pay attention to sounds.

The role of the pinna, the outer ear of humans, is to collect sound waves from the air and direct them into the external ear canal.

Not all humans can move their ears, but some can, and this may be a hangover from when it was necessary.

Now, we mostly look at something if we pay attention to it – while some animals can continue to eat while focusing their attention on sounds.

Having two ears helps you figure out where sounds are coming from.

3. Your ears don’t really hear

As we’ve discussed previously in this series, your eyes receive light, but it’s your brain that translates that information into an image.

Likewise, the ear collects sound waves, but it is the brain that translates this information into sound.

Sound waves travel at about 760 mph from the external ear canal to the tympanic membrane, the eardrum at the end of the canal.

These sound waves make your eardrum vibrate. This activates the small bones in the middle ear and sends sound waves to the inner ear, the cochlea.

The cochlea is shaped like a snail and contains thousands of tiny hair cells that move with the vibrations of sound waves and send information along the vestibulocochlear nerve to the auditory center in the brain, which then translates it into the sound you hear.

4. Your body contains a hammer and an anvil

And truth! But maybe not the size of the hammer that’s in the toolbox in the back of a closet somewhere.

Ossicles are small bones found in the middle ear, they are the smallest bones in the human body.

There are three ossicles that are named in Latin for their shapes: the malleus, which means hammer, the incus, which means anvil, and the stirrup – which means stirrup, like a stirrup when riding a horse.

This last occisle, the stapes, connects to the oval window which is the connection between the middle and inner ear.

These bones are tiny: the malleus is approximately 8mm high and 2.7mm wide, the anvil is just under 7mm high and about 5mm wide, and smallest of all, the stirrup is about 3 .5mm high and 2.4mm wide.

5. How low can you go?

The human ear can detect sound waves as low as 20 Hz to around 20,000 Hz.

Hearing loss can occur at any age, and it may take even a single exposure to very loud noises of more than 120 decibels to permanently damage your hearing.

To put this into perspective, a normal human conversation is about 60dB and a whisper is about 30dB. Regular exposure to loud noises can damage hearing over time, so protect your ears from loud music and at work if appropriate.

Even the sound of a lawnmower (80-85dB) can cause problems depending on how long you are exposed to the noise.

Ringing in your ears after a loud concert or sporting event is a sign that you are damaging your ears!

6. Don’t put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear

That was a phrase I heard during medical school and still use, ‘don’t put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear’ – and you can’t actually put your elbow in your ear, so leave them alone!

Ears are self-cleaning, you don’t need to clean ear wax with a cotton swab and in fact using a cotton swab even if it removes some wax actually compacts and impacts the wax further into the canal making the problem worse. Leave your ears alone!

If you see wax in your outer ear, it can be removed.

7. The wax is not dirty

The ear canal has glands that produce a waxy substance called cerumen, also known as wax.

Earwax is not dirty, it is part of the way the ear cleans itself and traps dust and other forms of dirt, bacteria, etc. so they cannot damage the ear.

Earwax also helps protect your ear canal when you are submerged in water, as water enters your ear canals.

However, too much wax can be a problem as it can dry out, harden and block the ear canal, affecting hearing.

Wax softening drops are available over the counter. If that’s not enough, microsuction can remove the earwax.

8. Wax comes in different colors and textures

Some people have sticky yellow earwax and others have drier white/gray earwax and this appears to be genetic.

The gene responsible for this was found in 2006 in Japan.

Yellow sticky wax is more common in people of Caucasian and African descent, while gray/white wax is more common in people of East Asian descent.

Anthropologists have even used earwax to track the migration of humans!

9. Your ears are involved in balance

The eighth cranial nerve is called the vestibulocochlear nerve. The cochlear part of the nerve is responsible for hearing, while the vestibular part is involved in balance.

The vestibular system is found in the inner ear and includes three loops, called semicircular canals.

These semicircular canals are filled with fluid that moves as you move your head, and signals are sent through the vestibular nerve to the brain.

Balance also depends on information from vision and proprioception, which is related to the sensation of movement in the skin, joints and muscles – after all, even with your eyes closed you know where your body is in space, whether you are sitting or standing. .

10. Seasickness surrounds your ears!

When there is a mismatch between the signals received in the brain from these three areas, for example, when you are sitting in a boat and you tell your brain that you are sitting, but your ear tells you that you are moving up and down on the waves and your eyes may emit another signal, this results in motion sickness.

So, the nausea actually comes from your ears, even if you bring up the contents of your stomach!

11. The ear never sleeps

In the same way that you “see”, or rather your optic nerve sends information to your brain when your eyes are closed or you are sleeping, you never stop hearing.

This means you keep listening at night.

Fortunately, though, your brain learns to ignore most incoming sounds so you can sleep.

As you calm down during the night, you may notice that any tinnitus becomes louder as the daytime noise subsides and you can then focus more on the tinnitus sounds.

And even while sleeping, unusual or loud noises wake you up!

12. You can ‘hear’ food

It sounds strange, but flavor is not just about the impact of food on the taste buds in your mouth, it is also related to smell and, perhaps surprisingly, hearing.

After all, you hear it while munching on a crisp apple or the sound of ice clinking in a cold drink.

The sounds you receive provide information about the food: a crisp apple will likely be fresher than a soft one, the fizz of a newly opened bottle of soda versus a flat bottle.

Studies have even shown that hearing certain types of sounds can affect the taste of food.

Eating is ‘cross modal’, involving multiple sensory systems: if you ‘eat with your eyes first’, the other senses are also involved!

Finally – why do we have earlobes?

No one really knows what they are for, other than where to put the earrings!

They have a good blood supply which can help keep their ears warm as they are quite exposed to the elements!