Talk:Ear

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Contents 1 Question 2 Cochlea 3 13.2cm ear hair 4 Splitting 5 Earlobe 6 Bat pic?

[edit] Question

Can listening to headphones at a louder volume be bad for hearing if in reality the decimal production is much less than a large speaker at a concert for instance? Perhaps the headphones sound louder due to proximity but at the same time don't have a negative effect?

75.73.201.199 03:10, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

That's what we call wishful thinking; it's very good for the hearing-aid industry. It's the intensity at the ear that matters, not how much sound power a speaker or headphone is putting out. Dicklyon 03:51, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

The headphones may indeed be more damaging to the ear as more of the sound is directly entering the ear as opposed to the speaker distributing sound all around and the auricle gathering only part of the sound waves. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 206.255.198.30 (talk) 00:44, 13 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Cochlea

The description of the cochlea is wrong. It should discuss the basilar membrane and its vibration properties. The hair cells are not the frequency separators in the auditory system; they only transduce the frequency separated information output from the basilar mambrane. I'll fix it at some point; I'm trying to get so neuro people to write up a basilar membrane article.

Chinasaur 20:15, Feb 28, 2004 (UTC)

I think also the description of the outer ear should be improved. In particular its role in sound elevation localisation. Furthermore the vestibular system does not just consist of the semicircular canals but has also two linear accelerometers, the saccula and the utricle.

Nov 20, 2004

Agreed, the role of the Outer Ear in elevation localization and also front-back discrimination should be described. --mcrema.

[edit] 13.2cm ear hair

Would a 13.2cm long ear hair be considered a medical problem (disease)? I don't know, but it looks odd. [1]

No Cuzandor 19:24, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Splitting

I'd like to split out inner, middle, and outer ears into their own articles. Any objections? --Arcadian 14:14, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

"Outer ear" should be merged into Pinna, I think. —Keenan Pepper 17:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Hearing no major objection, I've performed the split. Per Keenan's point, the outer ear section states "The visible part is called the pinna, or auricle, and functions to collect and focus sound waves.", which implies that the pinna and outer ear are not exactly synonyms. However, I can't find a good reference for a clear distinction between the two terms. So, if you (or anyone else) wanted to merge pinna and the new outer ear article, I would have no objection. --Arcadian 22:36, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

outer ear and pinna should remain two separate entries. The ear canal is part of the Outer Ear and it profoundly effects the spectrum of sound at the eardrum. --mcrema.

I think the split was misjudged. The Inner and Middle ear articles are very short, and the total content on one page would still be shorter than many articles on Wikipedia. I came here looking for information on the ear, and about the only thing I find out from the ear page is that it can be split into 3 sections! Compare this with the article on the Eye (granted it needs cleaning up) and the Mouth. --craigTheBrit 15:55, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Earlobe

No mention of the earlobe... I came to this page looking for information about attached / free-hanging earlobes. Not that it's particularly important, but it's especially weird that I typed "earlobe" in the searchbox, got redirected to this page and there's not even a single occurrence of the word in the article. --Cotoco 16:28, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Try earlobe. Dicklyon 04:44, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bat pic?

Should there really be that picture of bats at the top of the page? It would make more sense to have a picture of either a human ear or else a variety of ears. Bat ears are interesting but the pic near the summary probably should not be bat specific. Sahuagin 18:45, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I like the bat picture. Such wonderful variety of ears. Dicklyon 04:42, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I really don't think it's appropriate to have a large picture of bats at the beginning of this article. It's neither informative nor relevant to this particular article. Yes, bats have ears. So do many other animals, including humans. The focus of this article should remain mostly on human ears, since it is humans, after all, who are reading and writing this article.

The article should also concentrate more on the anatomy and physiology of the ear. The labels on the current diagram are too small to see. Most people looking up 'ear' in an encyclopedia already know what an ear looks like from the outside. They want to learn a little bit more how it works on the inside. Get rid of that bat poster and give this article a little more focus. Just my 2¢ worth. 130.94.162.61 06:40, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the bat picture should stay. It illustrates bat pennae which are probably the most advanced ears on the planet. Did you know, that they filter out specific frequencies of sound depending on the angle from which the sound originates? That is how the bat can find an echo in 3D! I do think that it shouldn't be at the top of the article though. Why is it that the article is divided into human and invertibrate ears? That seems to omit a lot of biological diversity (i.e., non-human mammals and other vertibrates. --Selket 07:23, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I am a brand new newcomer to this article as of 5 minutes ago, and I came here to find if I was the only one that thought this picture of bats was inappropriate at the level of the title. It really is. There should be a picture of a human ear there. If we want to illustrate that different critters have different ears, then let's show a collage of different animal ears. The picture that is there is a picture of bats, not ears, and is totally irrelevant to the article, which is why I removed it. It can go back, perhaps under an article or section called "bat hearing", but not next to the Ear title. Reswobslc 04:30, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I found the bat ear picture quite appropriate and illustrative. Add something up front with human ears if you like, and we can argue about the order, but unless I hear more objections, this one should stay. I'll put it back if someone hasn't already. Dicklyon 05:15, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, unfortunately this article is missing a lot of relevant information. Check out eye for an example of what this article is missing. Fishal 21:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I rearranged the images and added a new one to try to incorporate everyone's positions on the bat picture. I hope everyone likes my changes. --Selket ^Talk 05:37, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

That's somewhat better, but unfortunately, like I said before, the labels on the anatomical diagram are too small to read. Perhaps that image could be edited to show the labels in larger type. (The bat poster, frankly, would go better in an article on bats than in this article.) 71.216.22.6 02:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)