A mechanism that activates specific muscles in our ears is a leftover from our evolutionary past, back when our ancestors depended more on their hearing for survival.

Evolution has largely deprived us of our ability to swivel our ears, but those vestigial muscles still activate when we ...

A muscle that we thought served no purpose beyond enabling some people to wiggle their ears is actually active when we are ...

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 ...

“The exact reason these became vestigial is difficult to tell, as our ancestors lost this ability about 25 million years ago, ...