A USELESS ORNAMENT
The shell of the ear appears to be the only part of man’s visible body which has ceased to be useful and become purely ornamental “Persons whose ears have been cut off hear just as well as before,” says Professor Haeckel. Dr. J. Toynbee, F.R.S., “after collecting all the evidence on this head, concludes that the external shell is of no distinct use;” and Darwin was informed by Professor Preyer that after experimenting on the functions of the shell of the ear he had come to nearly the same conclusion.
To infer from this that our external ears have been developed, through Sexual Selection, for purely ornamental purposes, would not be in accord with scientific analogies. For, often as existing organs (horns, feathers, etc.) are modified for ornamental purposes, there are no known instances of any that have been specially developed for that purpose; even the facial muscles of expression being, as we have seen, in this predicament. Hence we are led to conclude that man has inherited the shell of his ear from a remote apelike ancestor, to whom it was of use in catching faint sounds, and who consequently had the power, common to other animals, not only of directing the ears as a whole to different points of the compass, but of temporarily altering its shape. Indeed, one of the strongest proofs of our descent from lower animals lies in the fact that man still possesses, in a rudimentary form, the muscles needed to move the ears. Some savage tribes have considerable control over these muscles. The famous physiologist, Johannes Müller, after long and patient efforts, succeeded in recovering the power of moving his ears; and Darwin writes: “I have seen one man who could draw the whole ear forwards; other men can draw it upwards; another who could draw it backwards; and from what one of these persons told me, it is probable that most of us, by often touching our ears, and thus directing our attention towards them, could recover some power of movement by repeated trials.”
Ordinary monkeys still possess the power to move their ears; but the manlike or anthropoid apes resemble us in the rudimentary condition of their ear-muscles; and Darwin was assured by the keepers in the London Zoological Gardens that these animals never move or erect their ears. He suggests two theories to account for the loss of this power: first, that, owing to their arboreal habits and great strength, these apes were not exposed to much danger, and thus gradually, through disuse, lost control over these organs, just as birds on oceanic islands where they are not subject to attacks have lost the use of their wings; secondly, that the freedom with which they can move the head in a horizontal plane enabled them to dispense with mobile ears.
The remarkable variability of the ears—greater, by the way, in men than in women—is another reason for regarding them as rudimentary organs, inherited from remote semi-human ancestors, to whom they were useful; for great variability is a characteristic of all rudimentary organs. Haeckel facetiously suggests that “at large assemblies, where our interest is not sufficiently enchained, nothing is more instructive and entertaining than a comparative study of the countless variations in the form of the ears.” The ancient Greek artists were aware of this variability, for Wincklemann speaks of “the infinite variety of forms of the ear on heads modelled from life.” “It was customary with the ancient artists to elaborate no portion of the head more diligently than the ears.” “In portrait figures, when the countenance is so much injured as not to be recognised, we can occasionally make a correct conjecture as to the person intended, if it is one of whom we have any knowledge, merely by the form of the ear; thus we infer a head of Marcus Aurelius from an ear with an unusually large inner opening.”
If we compare a man’s ears with those of a dog or horse, differences of shape appear no less conspicuous than differences in mobility. Two points are especially characteristic of man—the folded upper margin and the lobule. Our cousins, the anthropoid apes, are the only other animals which have the margin of the ear thus folded inwards, the lower monkeys having them simple and pointed, like other animals. The sculptor, Mr. Woolner, called Darwin’s attention to “a little blunt point, projecting from the inwardly-folded margin or helix.” Darwin, on investigating the matter, came to the conclusion that these points “are vestiges of the tips of former erect and pointed ears”; being led to think so “from the frequency of their occurrence, and from the general correspondence in position with that of the tip of a pointed ear.”
The lobule is still more peculiar to man than the folded margin, since he does not even share it with the anthropoid apes, although, according to Professor Mivart, “a rudiment of it is found in the gorilla.” An intermediate stage between man and ape is occupied by some savage tribes in whom the lobule is scantily developed or even absent.