Talk:Ear

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To-do list for Ear: edit · history · watch · refresh
  • Vestigiality of ears (e.g. muscle in human ear)
  • Discuss creating a separate sub-article on human ears so this article can stay focussed.
It is requested that a video clip or video clips be included in this article to improve its quality.

Requesting a video of a person who is able to move their ears doing so

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Contents

[edit] Question on headphones

Can listening to headphones at a louder volume be bad for hearing if in reality the decimal production is much less than a large speaker at a concert for instance? Perhaps the headphones sound louder due to proximity but at the same time don't have a negative effect?

75.73.201.199 03:10, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

That's what we call wishful thinking; it's very good for the hearing-aid industry. It's the intensity at the ear that matters, not how much sound power a speaker or headphone is putting out. Dicklyon 03:51, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
The headphones may indeed be more damaging to the ear as more of the sound is directly entering the ear as opposed to the speaker distributing sound all around and the auricle gathering only part of the sound waves. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 206.255.198.30 (talk) 00:44, 13 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Cochlea

The description of the cochlea is wrong. It should discuss the basilar membrane and its vibration properties. The hair cells are not the frequency separators in the auditory system; they only transduce the frequency separated information output from the basilar mambrane. I'll fix it at some point; I'm trying to get so neuro people to write up a basilar membrane article.

Chinasaur 20:15, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

I think also the description of the outer ear should be improved. In particular its role in sound elevation localisation. Furthermore the vestibular system does not just consist of the semicircular canals but has also two linear accelerometers, the saccula and the utricle.

Nov 20, 2004

Agreed, the role of the Outer Ear in elevation localization and also front-back discrimination should be described. --mcrema.

May 8, 2008

The description of the cochlea is incorrect. The NIH description is a good model:

http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/noise.asp

"The bones in the middle ear amplify, or increase, the sound and send the vibrations to the snail-shaped cochlea, or inner ear. The cochlea is a fluid-filled organ with an elastic membrane that runs down its length and divides the cochlea into an upper and lower part. This membrane is called the “basilar” membrane because it serves as the base, or ground floor, on which key hearing structures sit.

The vibrations cause the fluid inside the cochlea to ripple, and a traveling wave forms along the basilar membrane. Hair cells—sensory cells sitting on top of the membrane—“ride the wave.” This motion causes bristly structures on top of the hair cells to bump up against an overlying membrane and deflect to one side."

[edit] 13.2cm ear hair

Would a 13.2cm long ear hair be considered a medical problem (disease)? I don't know, but it looks odd. [1]

No Cuzandor 19:24, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Splitting

I'd like to split out inner, middle, and outer ears into their own articles. Any objections? --Arcadian 14:14, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

"Outer ear" should be merged into Pinna, I think. —Keenan Pepper 17:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
Hearing no major objection, I've performed the split. Per Keenan's point, the outer ear section states "The visible part is called the pinna, or auricle, and functions to collect and focus sound waves.", which implies that the pinna and outer ear are not exactly synonyms. However, I can't find a good reference for a clear distinction between the two terms. So, if you (or anyone else) wanted to merge pinna and the new outer ear article, I would have no objection. --Arcadian 22:36, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
outer ear and pinna should remain two separate entries. The ear canal is part of the Outer Ear and it profoundly effects the spectrum of sound at the eardrum. --mcrema.

I think the split was misjudged. The Inner and Middle ear articles are very short, and the total content on one page would still be shorter than many articles on Wikipedia. I came here looking for information on the ear, and about the only thing I find out from the ear page is that it can be split into 3 sections! Compare this with the article on the Eye (granted it needs cleaning up) and the Mouth. --craigTheBrit 15:55, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Earlobe

No mention of the earlobe... I came to this page looking for information about attached / free-hanging earlobes. Not that it's particularly important, but it's especially weird that I typed "earlobe" in the searchbox, got redirected to this page and there's not even a single occurrence of the word in the article. --Cotoco 16:28, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Try earlobe. Dicklyon 04:44, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bat pic?

Should there really be that picture of bats at the top of the page? It would make more sense to have a picture of either a human ear or else a variety of ears. Bat ears are interesting but the pic near the summary probably should not be bat specific. Sahuagin 18:45, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I like the bat picture. Such wonderful variety of ears. Dicklyon 04:42, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I really don't think it's appropriate to have a large picture of bats at the beginning of this article. It's neither informative nor relevant to this particular article. Yes, bats have ears. So do many other animals, including humans. The focus of this article should remain mostly on human ears, since it is humans, after all, who are reading and writing this article.
The article should also concentrate more on the anatomy and physiology of the ear. The labels on the current diagram are too small to see. Most people looking up 'ear' in an encyclopedia already know what an ear looks like from the outside. They want to learn a little bit more how it works on the inside. Get rid of that bat poster and give this article a little more focus. Just my 2¢ worth. 130.94.162.61 06:40, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
I think the bat picture should stay. It illustrates bat pennae which are probably the most advanced ears on the planet. Did you know, that they filter out specific frequencies of sound depending on the angle from which the sound originates? That is how the bat can find an echo in 3D! I do think that it shouldn't be at the top of the article though. Why is it that the article is divided into human and invertibrate ears? That seems to omit a lot of biological diversity (i.e., non-human mammals and other vertibrates. --Selket 07:23, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
I am a brand new newcomer to this article as of 5 minutes ago, and I came here to find if I was the only one that thought this picture of bats was inappropriate at the level of the title. It really is. There should be a picture of a human ear there. If we want to illustrate that different critters have different ears, then let's show a collage of different animal ears. The picture that is there is a picture of bats, not ears, and is totally irrelevant to the article, which is why I removed it. It can go back, perhaps under an article or section called "bat hearing", but not next to the Ear title. Reswobslc 04:30, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
I found the bat ear picture quite appropriate and illustrative. Add something up front with human ears if you like, and we can argue about the order, but unless I hear more objections, this one should stay. I'll put it back if someone hasn't already. Dicklyon 05:15, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, unfortunately this article is missing a lot of relevant information. Check out eye for an example of what this article is missing. Fishal 21:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I rearranged the images and added a new one to try to incorporate everyone's positions on the bat picture. I hope everyone likes my changes. --Selket Talk 05:37, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
That's somewhat better, but unfortunately, like I said before, the labels on the anatomical diagram are too small to read. Perhaps that image could be edited to show the labels in larger type. (The bat poster, frankly, would go better in an article on bats than in this article.) 71.216.22.6 02:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Question

Will going to a concert and listening close to a speaker affect your hearing? (unsigned from 70.122.68.172)

WHAT? Dicklyon 02:58, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Yep -if it's intense enough. As a rule of thumb, the further away from the speaker the less damage. You know that ringing sound you get when you leave a club, that's not a Good Thing. That's the sound of your inner ears disintegrating (well, maybe not quite). The BBC reported a study ages ago giving hearing tests to people before and after clubbing, and the next morning ones that did not wear ear protection had suffered a hearing loss. It stands to reason - and is a bit like people losing hearing due to being in artillery regiments. A film about it (sort of) is It's All Gone Pete Tong which may interest. I do wonder how much damage perpetual headphone use causes (see above), and having a hearing issue myself, I would not for a minute recommend it to anyone, especially as most are not reversible. Oh, by the way, questions are best off fired to the reference desk, where you may even get an answer from someone who knows stuff. LeeG 01:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Human ear

Should we have a separate article on the human ear (now or eventually) so as to avoid undue weight being given to one species? Cultural aspects of ears could be discussed, as well as the specific anatomy and vestigiality of human ears. There is also a substantial section about problems with human ears, which could go there as well. We could even throw in ears in cuisine, I see an image of a dish at commons that would go well there.

Regarding the lead image, it should be a collage and not a single species. The bat image was better than the human ear as it at least featured a variety of different species with varying ears. Richard001 07:57, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Further to this could sections be added explaining the ear structures of vertebrates other than mammals?
Pagw 17:16, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article Contradiction

Would an expert please fix the contradiction in the article? Look at the first two statements below (pinna has a function) compared to the third (pinna is vestigial).

- "The complicated design of the human outer ear does help capture sound (and imposes filtering that helps distinguish the direction of the sound source)..."
- "The pinna helps direct sound through the ear canal to the tympanic membrane..."
- "Although the function of the human auricle is rudimentary in terms of hearing..."

Also, it doesn't help that the outer ear is referred to by different names (outer ear, auricle, pinna) in different parts of the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.166.114.139 (talk) 00:45, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Since the first two are correct, I removed the third, which was not even relevant to the context. Dicklyon (talk) 01:40, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comparative photograph

Could the primate comparative photograph (human/other) be modified? I don't see any reason for the human ear in the photograph to be adorned with an earring. It is unrelated to the purpose of the photograph. JPBarrass (talk) 06:38, 15 January 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Comments moved from original article

This article should not only be about what the ear is and what it does it should also be about how you can damage your ear. There is millions of people who listen to their ipods or music devices blasted. This killshairs you have in your cochlea in which when you loose all those hairs you go death. When you blast that ipod you are actually killing those hairs which you need. You increase this especially when you jog or run while listening to your ipod. People should listen to it less especially teenagers because when they are at least thirty they have a high chance of being death. This information has not been made up by me i have recieved this information from a sixth grade level book called Science. from 74.236.47.43 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.1.181.208 (talk) 22:33, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The above was added to the main article. It seems to fit better here so I've copied and pasted it 163.1.181.208 (talk) 22:39, 26 February 2008 (UTC)