What the Heck Is This?

If you find this one hard to identify, here's an offbeat hint:

This thing you are looking at evolved from fish gills.

What is it? The close-up shows the exterior of the ear canal. See the full size image below, and read on for some really interesting ear facts …

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Did you know most people prefer using their right ear to listen?

Here's a good party trick: Try listening to one voice among many in a room. Scientists say our auditory cortex is pretty good at sorting them out and focusing on just one.

Did you know that most East Asians have dry earwax, but most people of African or European descent have wet earwax?

Now for the Gross Fact of the Day: If your ear is full of wax, don't remove it. Scientists say it should stay.

What about that fishy hint? When researchers studied ear bones of a close cousin of the first land animals, a 370-million-year-old fossil fish called Panderichthys, they were able to trace (along with other evidence) the development of our ear bones and the cavity that is the inner ear clear back to fish.

• Previous What the Heck image
• Useless Limbs (and Other Vestigial Organs)
• How Evolution Works

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