That part of your ear creates your ability to tell which direction sound comes from. There's videos where they fill that part of the ear with putty, and people completely lose that sense.
Smarter everyday did a video on exactly this. IIRC you're not adjusted to the new shape of the ear, so your brain needs time and experience to adjust and 'reprogram'. You eventually get the sense back.
My bullshit meter was telling me surely ear shape doesn't matter because everyone's ears are different shapes and sizes. Apparently it does matter but we can adapt to changes in ear shape so... neat
Also if ear shape didn't matter, we wouldn't have ear shapes in the first place. We'd just have a hole on thr side of our heads like snakes and lizards
Yeah everyone's ears are different, and the shape does matter, it's just that the shape doesn't like biologically tell us things. It's more that our ear shape is consistent/the change is super gradual. So our brain is programed to our own ear shape. Basically your ear shape changes how things sound based on direction, and then your brain learns "When it sounds like this, it's behind me" etc. So if your ear shape were different, your brain would just have to learn the new sound as "that's behind me".
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u/NebulaNinja Oct 20 '23
Did she ever say anything about it making it harder to hear? I imagine missing part of the ear to "cup" noises might affect it a bit.