Why can we hear sound around us no matter what direction we are facing, but in order to see anything, we have to be facing in the direction of that object?

Question

Like I get that we obviously have ears on both sides of our head, but I would think that something that is directly ahead of us we should be unable to hear, since that object is basically perpendicular to our ears, but of course we can hear it absolutely fine. Why is that?

In: Biology

Answer 1

This is why our ears are such a weird shape, to collect sound and allow us to tell where it’s coming from. If we had no external ear, just a hole in the side of our heads, we would have much less capacity to tell which direction a sound is coming from and less capacity to hear sounds directly in front

Cupping your hands around your ears basically gives you “bigger ears” and you can increase your ability to hear a sound in a given direction by cupping your hands around your ears and turning in the direction