eli5: why when your ears get cold and blood flow is slower you can’t feel them but can still hear
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Because your external ears are not really your ears at all. They are just flaps of skin and connective tissue. They help a little bit in that they direct sound into your actual ear, but that is it.
The bones in your middle ear vibrate and carry sound into your cochlea in your inner ear. It is in that organ that hairs vibrate and trigger the neurons that actually ultimately lead to your brain and calls you to hear things.
Even when your external ears are frozen solid or completely missing, you can still hear fairly well because all of the actual work is being done well inside your skull.
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