How the ears work, how we hear, and the best ways to keep yours healthy for life – expert advice
- For such a small body part, your ears work hard – they don’t sleep, they’re imperative for balance, and they keep growing throughout our lives
- One in three adults over 65 has hearing loss, so start early to protect yours – and that includes never sticking anything in them, including cotton buds
Ears are funny things. I used to stare down at my infant son’s ears as he lay in my arms and marvel at their swirls and whorls. I fretted over the fact they didn’t match. I needn’t have worried: our ears are never entirely identical.
Just as they don’t look exactly the same as each other, nor do they hear the same.
Your right ear is better than your left ear at hearing speech, while your left ear is more sensitive to music, according to a US study that examined the hearing of 3,000 newborns.
And just as each ear is different to the other in a pair, no pair of ears in the world is the same – not even the ears of identical twins.
Our ears have been called our second fingerprint and are used in biometrics and recognition.
Seventy years ago, forensic scientists began using measurements of suspects’ ears to marry them to fingerprints left behind at crime scenes.