Bodily Oddities

Ear wiggling

Also called: Moving your ears · Auricular muscle control

Moving the outer ears using three small muscles that most mammals use to point their ears at sounds. Between 10% and 22% of people can wiggle at least one ear. Many more can learn.

Ears Muscle Trick Voluntary
Try it Learnable Party trick Vestigial Genetic

How common

10–22% (one ear) Common · 10–50% About 18% can move both ears at the same time.

Can you do this?

These are answers from visitors, not a study.

How it works

Three small muscles attach the outer ear to the skull: one in front, one above, and one behind1. They are controlled by the facial nerve, the same nerve that runs your smile. Cats, dogs, and horses use the same muscles to swivel their ears toward a sound. Humans no longer need to. The muscles are vestigial, a leftover from ancestors who did2.

The muscles still work. Between 10% and 22% of people can wiggle at least one ear on command, and about 18% can move both at once1. A study in 2020 found that even in people who cannot wiggle, the muscles twitch slightly toward a sound the person is paying attention to1. The old circuit is still wired in.

The ability is partly inherited. A genetic survey by AncestryDNA reported 250 DNA markers linked to ear wiggling in data from more than 790,000 people1. It is also learnable. Many people find the muscles through motor overflow: raising the eyebrows or smiling hard pulls the scalp, and the ear muscles fire along with it. Some people learn it by years of pushing their glasses up without using their hands.

Try it

  1. Sit in front of a mirror and watch your ears.
  2. Raise your eyebrows as high as you can. Notice whether the ears lift or move back.
  3. Smile as wide as you can. Notice whether the ears pull up.
  4. Try to keep the eyebrows and mouth still while making the same pull behind the ear. This is the hard part.
  5. Practise for a few minutes a day. Most people who keep at it for a few weeks find some movement.

History and culture

Charles Darwin discussed the ear muscles in 1871 as evidence that humans descend from animals that could point their ears2.

Sources and further material

  1. Encyclopedia Auricular muscles The three muscles, their nerve supply, and their vestigial status. Strauss et al., 2020, showed they still twitch toward attended sounds.
  2. Encyclopedia Vestigiality Why humans keep muscles they no longer use.
  3. Video Ear wiggling tutorial YouTube search.
Ears Trick

Ear rumbling

About half of all people can make a low roar inside their own head by tensing a tiny muscle in the middle ear.

43–55% of people
Muscle Trick

Raising one eyebrow

Lifting a single eyebrow while the other stays down. Between 30% and 35% of people can do it without training. Most of the rest can learn it in front of a mirror.

30–35%
Muscle Trick

Flaring your nostrils

Widening the nostrils on purpose. About 30% of people can do it on command. Everyone does it without thinking during hard breathing and strong emotion.

~30% on command
Ears Variation

Darwin's tubercle

A small bump on the folded rim of the ear, which Darwin thought was the leftover tip of a pointed ancestral ear. Between 10% and 58% of people have one, depending on the population.

10–58% of people