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Did You Know This: Ears
Published by Converser Nihil in Science
December 3, 2009
Ten facts about ears you may not have known.
- Both the smallest muscle and the smallest bone in the human body are in the ears. The muscle is called the stapedius, and paralysis of this muscle can cause hyperacusis. This condition causes normal sounds to appear extremely loud.
- The smallet bone is called the stapes or stirrup bone, and plays an integral part in the hearing process.
- Lobsters know that they are the right way up underwater by keeping sand in their ears. Gravity keeps it at the bottom of their ears. Researchers once replaced the sand with iron filings and used a magnet to move them around, fooling the Lobsters into flipping upside down.
- Spiders do not have ears at all, and instead hear through tiny hairs on their legs. This isn’t as strange as it sounds as inside human ears approximately 15,000 tiny hairs allow us to hear a whisper from many feet away.
- Loud noise can destroy these hair cells, which are irreplaceable. If you’re right next to someone and still have to shout to be heard, then you can be pretty much guaranteed that you’re doing damage to your ears.
- Human hearing starts getting worse at about the age of 20.
- The praying mantis has only one ear, located in the centre of its chest. Crickets have their ears on their legs, while cicadas have them on their stomach.
- The tufts on owls that look like ears are only for display purposes. Their ears are in fact on the sides of their faces, usually right on the outer edge of the ring of feathers around their eyes. The ears are positioned at different heights on the head, allowing an owl to know which vertical dierction a sound is coming from, as well as which horizontal direction.
- The ancients Chinese used to think that ears indicated character and destiny. Long earlobes meant a long life, while thick ones meant wealth.
- They also believed that longer earlobes indicated a more noble person. Liu Bei, founder of the Han dynasty in AD221 had ears that supposedly reached his shoulders.
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11 Comments
Great post, I added it to my blog. Thanks Anita
great facts. New things i learned. Thank u
Good one.
great article
A great article with some very interesting facts.
Very well done.
nice and informative article
Interesting..
Excellent facts. Interesting.
A great perspective on one of the most neglected body parts… Knowing some new ideas (for me) regarding ears brought a smile on my face. Thanks..
Great article. I like it.
Good one…