Evolution has largely deprived us of our ability to swivel our ears, but those vestigial muscles still activate when we listen intently, according to new research. Reading time 3 minutes Tens of ...

Your body is a living museum of evolution, carrying within it the remarkable story of our species' 6-million-year journey from tree-dwelling primates to ...

In almost every species, ear movement can be a clue that the animal is trying to pay close attention to something. When people are trying hard to listen to something, the body seems to do its best to ...

We've all surely met someone who has the ability to move their ears, but why is such a thing so rare? One of the most interesting vestigial structures in our bodies are the auricular muscles. These ...

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 ...

Our distant ancestors had several body parts that have become fairly useless over the course of evolution–our wisdom teeth, the tails that are present during the sixth week of gestation, and the ...

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 ...

Humans actually have vestigial muscles that activate when listening closely to something, even though people lost the ability to really move their... Your ears can't prick up, but your ear muscles ...