not appear within the specified time limit, the complainant summoned witnesses to make statements. if they refused, as often happened, the injured party was allowed to drag them by the ear and to pinch them hard if they resisted. hence the french expression "se faire tirer l’oreille", of which the literal meaning is "to have one's ear pulled" and the figurative meaning "to take a lot of persuading". we use the expression "to tweak (or pull) someone's ears" to mean "inflict a punishment"." the pinnae have an effect on facial appearance. in western societies, protruding ears (present in about 5% of ethnic europeans) have been considered unattractive, particularly if asymmetric. the first surgery to reduce the projection of prominent ears was published in the medical literature by ernst dieffenbach in 1845, and the first case report in 1881. pointy ears are a characteristic of some creatures in folklore such as the french croquemitaine, brazilian curupira or japanese earth spider. it has been a feature of characters on art as old as that of ancient greece and medieval europe. pointy ears are a common characteristic of many creatures in the fantasy genre, including elves, faeries, pixies, hobbits, or orcs. they are a characteristic of creatures in the horror genre, such as vampires. pointy ears are also found in the science fiction genre; for example among the vulcan and romulan races of the star trek universe and the nightcrawler character from the x-men universe. georg von békésy was a hungarian biophysicist born in budapest, hungary. in 1961, he was awarded the nobel prize in physiology or medicine for his research on the function of the cochlea in the mammalian hearing organ. the vacanti mouse was a laboratory mouse that had what looked like a human ear grown on its back. the "ear" was actually an ear-shaped cartilage structure grown by seeding cow cartilage cells into a biodegradable ear-shaped mold and then implanted under the skin of the mouse; then the cartilage naturally grew by itself. it was developed as an alternative to ear repair or grafting procedures and the results met with much publicity and controversy in 1997. other animals primate earshuman & crab-eating macaque(darwin's tubercle highlighted) pinnae of the bat the pinna helps direct sound through the ear canal to the eardrum. the complex geometry of ridges on the inner surface of some mammalian ears helps to sharply focus sounds produced by prey, using echolocation signals. these ridges can be regarded as the acoustic equivalent of a fresnel lens, and may be seen in a wide range of animals, including the bat, aye-aye, lesser galago, bat-eared fox, mouse lemur and others. some large primates such as gorillas and orang-utans (and also humans) have undeveloped ear muscles that are non-functional vestigial structures, yet are still large enough to be easily identified. an ear muscle that cannot move the ear, for whatever reason, has lost that biological function. this serves as evidence of homology between related species. in humans, there is variability in these muscles, such that some people are able to move their ears in various directions, and it has been said that it may be possible for others to gain such movement by repeated trials. in such primates, the inability to move the ear is compensated for mainly by the ability to easily turn the head on a horizontal plane, an ability which is not common to most monkeys—a function once provided by one structure is now replaced by another. in some animals with mobile pinnae (like the horse), each pinna can be aimed independently to better receive the sound. for these animals, the pinnae help localise the direction of the sound source. african bush elephantloxodonta africana fennec fox (desert regions)vulpes zerda arctic foxvulpes lagopus domestic rabbit – french lop breedoryctolagus cuniculus half-lop rabbitillustration bycharles darwin, 1868 the ear, with its blood vessels close to the surface, is an essential thermoregulator in some land mammals, including the elephant, the fox, and the rabbit. there are five types of ear carriage in domestic rabbits, some of which have been bred for exaggerated ear length—a potential health risk that is controlled in some countries. abnormalities in the skull of a half-lop rabbit were studied by charles darwin in 1868. in marine mammals, earless seals are one of three groups of pinnipedia. invertebrates only vertebrate animals have ears, though many invertebrates detect sound using other kinds of sense organs. in insects, tympanal organs are used to hear distant sounds. they are located either on the head or elsewhere, depending on the insect family. the tympanal organs of some insects are extremely sensitive, offering acute hearing beyond that of most other animals. the female cricket fly ormia ochracea has tympanal organs on each side of her abdomen. they are connected by a thin bridge of exoskeleton and they function like a tiny pair of eardrums, but, because they are linked, they provide acute directional information. the fly uses her "ears" to detect the call of her host, a male cricket. depending on where the song of the cricket is coming from, the fly's hearing organs will reverberate at slightly different frequencies. this difference may be as little as 50 billionths of a second, but it is enough to allow the fly to home in directly on a singing male cricket and parasitise it. simpler structures allow other arthropods to detect near-field sounds. spiders and cockroaches, for example, have hairs on their legs which are used for detecting sound. caterpillars may also have hairs on their body that perceive vibrations and allow them to respond to sound.