Ear Stories.

Today I have been reading, very slowly, Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man. Close to the beginning he discusses ears. He says that a sculpter friend of his has told him that some human ears have a little point in the side as indicated. Darwin says this is left over from when our ears were pointed.


So I did a little survey.

Here is Hodmandod Minor's ear.

Ah, an adorable ear, is it not? Rather like a shell. Rather like his mother's. It was a bit of a struggle bringing this shot to you, but it was worth it because looking carefully I have to say that I can see a distinct point. Maybe it is not very obvious but it is definitely there. Hodmandod Minor is half-wolf. It explains a lot.

And here is Hodmandod Senior's ear, which, rather disappointingly, shows no indication of a point at all.

Now Hodmandod Senior's ears are actually one of his best and most interesting features. This is because he can waggle them with quite a good degree of control. He has found that this ability can be used to defuse some potentially aggravating situations.

For instance, when a student, he had a particularly irritating supervisor who liked to berate him for little alleged transgressions. Hodmandod Senior's answer, apparently, was to give his ears a bit of a waggle, and the man would stop mid-sentence, forget completely what he was saying, and just watch the ears.

When we were first married these ears used to fascinate me. Sometimes I used to ask him for ear-wagging lessons but the activity seems to require muscles I don't have. It was a disability hard to get used to at first but over the years I have learnt to cope. Although my mother-in-law was also an impressive ear-waggler it does not seem to have been passed down to the next generation, which is disappointing.

So the ability to ear-waggle is not sex-linked. I expect Darwin would have been interested in that.