Humans wiggle their ears to hear better

A little muscle in our ear gets used when we're listening really intently to something, scientists say

Wiggling your ears is a fun party trick, but it turns out we do it ever so slightly when we're trying to hear better too.

Scientists previously thought the muscle used to wiggle your ears was essentially useless.

But new research has found it activates when humans are listening carefully to something.

Lots of animals use ear movement as a way to hear better - you may have seen a dog's ears pricking up after a sudden loud noise, or if you say "walkies!"

But humans lost the ability to move them millions of years ago.

"It is believed that our ancestors lost their ability to move their ears about 25 million years ago. Why, exactly, is difficult to say," said Andreas Schröer, the lead author of the research from Saarland University in Germany.

But they've now found it still activates in situations when a person is trying really hard to hear something.

Dogs and other animals can move their ears a lot more than humans can

How did they find it out?

The researchers asked 20 adults with no hearing problems to listen to an audiobook while a podcast was being played at the same time.

Crucially, almost none of the participants had the ability to wiggle their ears, so this wasn't a factor.

They studied them in three different scenarios, ranging from easiest where the podcast was much quieter to hardest where two podcasts were played at the same time at a similar volume to the audiobook.

Now the scientists want to do the study with more people

Schröer explained they wanted to test the muscle's sensitivity to "effortful listening".

She continued: "Think about trying to understand what someone is saying in an almost empty restaurant, and then trying to understand someone in a very busy restaurant".

Every adult in the study wore a set of electrodes, allowing the researchers to record the electrical activity produced by the muscles involved in wiggling the ears.

The scientists found the wriggly ear muscles were larger when they were in the harder scenarios.

Now, the scientists want to do the same experiment with a larger group of people.