If you hear something interesting, you might prick up your ears. That's a figurative expression, of course. People's ears don't actually move upward. But NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce found that this old ...

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 ...

But the auricular muscles might not be so useless after all. By Laura Baisas Published Jan 31, 2025 12:00 AM EST Deposit Photos Get the Popular Science daily ...

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 ...