50 Fun Facts About The Human Ear

Which bone of the middle ear is the smallest and lightest bone in the entire human body?

The stapes takes its name from the Medieval Latin for stirrup, which it resembles. Classical Latin had no such word, since stirrups did not exist in the ancient world.

The cochlea, the inner ear's spiral hearing chamber, is named after the Greek word for which animal?

Snail is the meaning of the Greek kokhlias, a nod to the coiled shell shape. Monotremes such as the platypus are the exception among mammals, with a cochlea that is not coiled.

Which Dutch painter took a razor to his own left ear after a row with Paul Gauguin?

Vincent van Gogh wrapped the ear in paper and delivered it to a woman at a brothel. He later painted himself wearing the bandages.

Which boxer was disqualified from a 1997 title fight for biting off part of Evander Holyfield's ear?

Mike Tyson bit both of Holyfield's ears in the third round in Las Vegas. The bout has been known ever since as The Bite Fight.

The decibel, the unit of sound level, honours which inventor whose mother and wife were both deaf?

Alexander Graham Bell gave his name to the bel, and a decibel is one tenth of that. His mother's deafness is what first led him to study acoustics.

The lumpy, swollen ear common among wrestlers and rugby players is named after which vegetable?

Cauliflower ear forms when a blow leaves a blood clot under the skin of the outer ear, which then heals into lumps. Rugby players wear scrum caps to prevent it.

Which process explains why your own voice sounds deeper to you than it does on a recording?

Bone conduction sends your voice through the skull to the inner ear as you speak. The skull carries low frequencies better than air does, so a recording sounds thinner than you expect.

Which travel ailment strikes when the inner ear and the eyes send the brain conflicting signals?

Motion sickness comes from that mismatch between the senses. It is why reading a book in a moving car can bring it on and watching the horizon helps.

Earwax, a protective substance that comes in wet and dry types, goes by which medical name?

Cerumen type is set by your genes: the wet kind is dominant and the dry kind recessive. Dry, flaky wax is the more common type among many East Asians.

Which passage, shorter and more horizontal in children, links the middle ear to the upper throat?

Eustachian tube shape is why young children get so many ear infections: a short, level passage lets germs in easily and drains fluid poorly. Swallowing briefly opens it.

Which condition, named from the Latin for 'to ring', means hearing sounds with no outside source?

Tinnitus is often described as ringing, but it can also sound like clicking, buzzing, hissing or roaring. One theory is that the brain turns up its own volume on frequencies it can no longer hear.

Which sensation of spinning while standing still is most often traced to an inner ear problem?

Vertigo is the most common type of dizziness. Its leading cause is loose crystal debris drifting inside the inner ear, which creates a false sense of movement whenever the head shifts.

Which instrument, fitted with a light and magnifying lens, lets a doctor look inside the ear canal?

Otoscope views take in the eardrum as well as the canal. Since the middle ear is hidden behind it, the look of the eardrum is how a doctor judges what is going on inside.

Which sporty nickname is given to inflammation of the ear canal that trapped water often sets off?

Swimmer's ear does not need a pool: water left behind after a shower can start it, and so can scratching the canal with a cotton swab.

A change in what makes your ears pop as an aeroplane climbs or comes in to land?

Air pressure falls as a plane climbs, so the air sealed behind the eardrum expands and pushes its way out. On the way down a slight vacuum forms until a swallow lets air back in.

The earlobe, unlike the rest of the outer ear, contains none of which firm, springy tissue?

Cartilage is missing from the lobe, which is soft fatty tissue instead. It has a large blood supply that may help to keep the ears warm.

The malleus, a middle-ear bone fixed to the eardrum, takes its Latin name from which tool?

Hammer is what malleus means, and the bone behaves like one. It picks up the eardrum's vibrations and passes them to its neighbour the incus, whose own name means anvil.

Ear infections in young children often begin shortly after a bout of which everyday illness?

Common cold swelling and mucus can block the narrow passage that drains the middle ear, trapping fluid where bacteria thrive. Five in six children have an ear infection by their third birthday.

Which three fluid-filled loops of the inner ear, set at right angles, detect the head's rotation?

Semicircular canals sit at right angles to one another, so each covers a different plane of movement. After a spin their fluid keeps swirling, which is why the room seems to carry on turning.

What is the medical name for the eardrum, the thin sheet between the outer and middle ear?

Tympanic membrane tears often heal naturally within a few weeks. The membrane is cone-shaped rather than flat, and the first of the middle ear's tiny bones is fixed to its inner side.

Human hearing is commonly said to span 20 to 20,000 of which unit of frequency?

Hertz count vibrations per second, and few people keep the full span for long. The range usually starts to shrink from around the age of eight, with the highest notes going first.

Which sound receptors of the cochlea can never grow back in humans once loud noise destroys them?

Hair cells number only about 15,000 in each cochlea at birth. Birds and fish can regrow theirs, which is why researchers study them in the search for a hearing-loss cure.

The inner ear's network of fluid-filled bony passages is known to anatomists by which name?

Labyrinth is the anatomists' term, and its bony shape varies enough between species that fossil hunters use it to tell Neanderthals from modern humans.

What do doctors call the commonest ear infection, in which fluid builds up behind the eardrum?

Otitis media strikes about one person in nine worldwide every year, some 700 million cases. Doctors confirm it by looking at the eardrum, because the symptoms alone can mimic other earaches.

What collective name, from the Latin for 'tiny bones', is given to the middle ear's three bones?

Ossicles work as a chain of levers, turning the eardrum's wide, weak movements into shorter, stronger ones for the inner ear.

What is the name for the visible flap of the outer ear, which funnels sound towards the ear canal?

Pinna is Latin for wing or fin. Its folds colour a sound differently depending on the angle it arrives from, which helps the brain judge whether a noise came from above or below.

What name is given to sound too high in frequency for even a healthy young human ear to detect?

Ultrasound begins where young adult hearing stops. Dogs hear more than twice as high and cats higher still, so both pick up sounds that are silent to their owners.

Which ability lets a listener name any musical note without first hearing a reference tone?

Perfect pitch is more common among speakers of tonal languages such as Mandarin and Vietnamese, where the rise and fall of a word changes its meaning.

What name is given to the inner ear's balance apparatus, which also tracks the head's position?

Vestibular system parts split the work: looped tubes sense rotation while two tiny organs sense straight-line acceleration. Faults in it bring dizziness, often with nausea.

Which skull bone houses the workings of the ear inside one of the densest parts of the skeleton?

Temporal bone has a rock-hard petrous section, from the Latin for stone-like, wrapped around the inner ear. Ancient DNA survives so well there that it is a favourite sample for geneticists.

Which graph from a hearing test plots the quietest sounds a person can detect at each frequency?

Audiogram readings are measured against a standard curve for typical hearing rather than against true silence, and each ear is charted separately.

What do psychologists call the brain's knack for following one voice in a noisy, crowded room?

Cocktail party effect was named by Colin Cherry in 1953. Later tests found that about a third of listeners still catch their own name in a conversation they are ignoring.

Which term describes the human ear's muscles, too weak to swivel it the way a monkey's can?

Vestigial muscles like these are leftovers from ancestors that needed them. Some people can still wiggle their ears with them, and others can learn the trick with practice.

The glands that make the ear canal's protective coating are a specialised version of which gland?

Sweat glands of the apocrine class are their closest relatives. Their output mixes with skin oil and shed skin cells to make the coating that lines the canal.

Which small pointed flap in front of the ear canal takes its name from the Greek for 'goat'?

Tragus tufts explain the name: the bristles that can grow on its underside were thought to resemble a goat's beard. Because it faces backwards, it helps to catch sounds from behind.

Which ear disorder, named after a French physician, causes bouts of dizziness and hearing loss?

Ménière's disease was described in 1861 by Prosper Menière, the first to trace all of its symptoms to a single fault in the inner ear. A feeling of fullness in the ear often comes before an attack.

What are the tiny tubes that surgeons fit into children's eardrums to drain trapped fluid called?

Grommets let air into the middle ear so that trapped fluid can clear. They rarely need removing, because the healing eardrum usually pushes them out by itself.

A small bump on the rim of some people's ears bears the name of which English naturalist?

Charles Darwin described it in The Descent of Man as a leftover of the pointed ears of other primates. He credited the sculptor Thomas Woolner with spotting it first.

Which kind of hearing loss, nine cases in ten, stems from damage to the inner ear or its nerve?

Sensorineural loss is usually permanent, and its commonest cause is simply growing older, followed by exposure to loud noise.

The Rinne and Weber tests for hearing loss are both carried out with which simple metal instrument?

Tuning fork tests compare sound heard through the air with sound sent through the skull behind the ear. If the skull route sounds louder, something is blocking the outer or middle ear.

Which part of the cochlea, named after an Italian anatomist, turns vibrations into nerve signals?

Organ of Corti has outer rows of receptor cells that physically amplify quiet sounds, and they are easily damaged when noise is too loud. Alfonso Corti first described it in 1851.

Two of a mammal's three middle-ear bones began as part of which structure in its early ancestors?

Jaw bones called the quadrate and articular gave up their place in the hinge and migrated into the ear. Reptiles still hinge their jaws on them and hear through a single ear bone.

Which manoeuvre, a scuba diver's standby, clears the ears by blowing against a pinched nose?

Valsalva was Antonio Maria Valsalva, a Bologna anatomist whose main scientific interest was the ear itself. Blow too hard and his trick can strain the middle ear and harm hearing.

A nerve serving which sense, other than hearing, runs across the inner side of the eardrum?

Taste signals from the front two-thirds of the tongue travel along a nerve that crosses the middle ear on its way to the brain. Injuring it can dull or distort flavours.

Which bony lump behind the ear, full of air pockets, takes its name from the Greek for 'breast'?

Mastoid process infections, which spread from the middle ear into its air pockets, were once a leading cause of death in children. Antibiotics have made them rare in wealthier countries.

The inner ear's tiny balance crystals, which shift when the head tilts, are made of which compound?

Calcium carbonate grains sit in a bed of jelly, and their weight tugs on receptor cells whenever the head moves. Fish have them too, laid down in yearly rings that reveal the fish's age.

Which term names the age-related hearing loss that strikes both ears and takes high notes first?

Presbycusis joins the Greek words for old and hearing. Because it takes high-pitched sounds first, consonants such as s and f are the earliest parts of speech to blur.

Which membrane-covered opening passes vibrations from the last middle-ear bone into the cochlea?

Oval window is far smaller than the eardrum, so the push gathered there is focused onto a tiny area, strongly enough to set the inner ear's fluid moving.

Which fluid, unusually rich in potassium, fills the membranous chambers of the inner ear?

Endolymph holds a positive charge of about 80 millivolts. That voltage drives potassium into the cochlea's receptor cells each time a sound bends their tips, and so triggers the nerve signal.

Which faint sounds, made by a healthy cochlea itself, are measured to screen newborn babies?

Otoacoustic emissions were predicted in 1948 and first recorded in 1978 by the physicist David Kemp. A microphone in the ear canal picks them up, so a baby too young to respond can still be tested.