10 unnecessary ridiculous facts about your ears

Hey, hey, all the way, DJ, let it play, hey, hey, can you hear me? You might take them for granted, those ear shells on the side of your head, but really: your ears are fascinatingly fun things. But, what do we actually know about them?

1. Did you know that you can maintain your balance thanks to your ears? In your inner ear is the balance organ. In the canals is a fluid (endolymph) and by the flow of this fluid, signals are sent to the brain that help you with your balance. Aha.

2. Yep, you might not want it, but your earlobes grow your entire life. Thank god not too fast: about 0.2 millimeters per year.

3. There is only one of your ear shell. Your fingerprint may be unique, but your ear shell is just as unique.

4. The first land animals even breathed through their ears. Swedish researchers studied a 370 million-year-old fossil of a fish and demonstrated how an ear evolved from a respiratory organ.

5. Bad news for boys: male hearing declines twice as fast. Men therefore also more often deal with hearing loss. Women also hear mid-range tones (like a crying baby or the whistling of birds) better than men. Hormones even ‘protect’ women against hearing loss between their 30s and 50s.

6. 1,400,000 Dutch people suffer from hearing problems. That is almost 10 percent of the Dutch population...

7. Despite the fact that for most adults the ‘pain threshold’ is around 120 decibels, you can already incur hearing damage after four hours of exposure to sounds above the 80-decibel threshold. A night of dancing with friends (when it, eh, was still possible) quickly exceeds 100 decibels. Yikes.

8. Both ears hear differently. The right ear is more sensitive to songs and music, while the left ear is more sensitive to speech.

9. The African elephant has the largest ears in the animal kingdom. Those flapping giants account for one-sixth (!) of its body. In proportion, those flappers are extremely thin, making their ears the largest cooling organ. Countless blood vessels run through them, allowing it to lose heat while flapping.

10. Even when we sleep, our brains remain sensitive to the environment. During sleep, the human ear continues to hear. And that's not all: the words and sounds we hear are interpreted by the brain. This allows you to carry real-life sounds into your dreams.

Image: @bykirstenvansanten