Flapping ears

Flapping ears

For nocturnal insects, predation by bats can turn a moonlight flight into a nightmare. Moths have a way of avoiding bats, however, in the form of ultrasonic hearing. Because they have 'tympanal' ears, they can hear the echolocation calls of incoming bats and take evasive action. Butterflies, which are mainly diurnal, have not been known to have ultrasonic hearing. But these images from an unusu...

No eye for ears

A 50-year-old man was seen for chronic renal failure of unknown origin. He had been diagnosed in 1981 and monitored continuously while his renal functions had deteriorated slowly; his current glomerular filtration rate was 17 ml/min. On this occasion, he was seen by a new doctor who observed that he was hard of hearing. The day was unusually bright and sunny; hence lateral cervical scars, 3 cm ...

Nodular colloid milium of the ears

Colliod milium is a degenerative change, which is characterized clinically by development of multiple yellowish, translucent papules and nodules on the light exposed skin and histologically by the presence of colloid in the dermal papillae. This is a rare condition and has some variants. We report a case of colloid millium with nodular and plaque lesions on his ears. Our patient was a far...

Listening with Two Ears

Hearing without Ears

We report on on-going work investigating the feasibility of using tissue conduction to evince auditory spatial perception. Early results indicate that it is possible to coherently control externalization, range, directionality (including elevation), movement and some sense of spaciousness without presenting acoustic signals to the outer ear. Signal control techniques so far have utilised discre...