When you yawn, do you hear a weird sound in your head like a
tidal wave rushing or someone hitting a really low note on a kettle drum? It’s
called ear rumbling in layman’s terms and it doesn’t happen to everyone. What and
why?
There’s a muscle in the ear called the tensor tympani. Just
like the ability to wiggle your earlobes, some people have figured out how to
control this muscle, which causes a vibration. To us rumblers, the vibration sounds like
a roaring noise deep in our ears. The muscle is commonly flexed during a yawn,
but some people (like me) can queue it up on command.
A tweet by Massimo illustrated and explained the basic concept:
Besides a yawn, people on Twitter have admitted to making it
happen by flexing their jaw, a neck muscle, or even closing their eyes.
If you can’t do this, it’s hard to explain, but one Twitter user said it sounds
like a thunderstorm in your head:
For those who have this ability, it’s basically a mini super-power.
A useless superpower, but one nonetheless.
Evolutionarily speaking, this reflex probably developed over
time to protect the ears from loud noises, like thunder. It’s not so quick a reflex to protect the ears from explosions of gunshots though.
People who can do this are so amazed with themselves, they
even formed a subreddit for Ear Rumblers. Mostly, the threads are filled with people just say how cool
it is and how they never knew what it was, but not much else since it’s sort of
a useless party trick. Ear rumblers assemble?
Just how many people can do this? An informal, unscientific poll has about 55% percent claiming to have this magic power. It makes you wonder if
more people can do this but just don’t know what it’s called or haven’t found
the right combination of muscle movements for making it happen.
One interesting nugget in the poll asks responders if they
would like earphones controlled by ear rumbling. Rumble to skip this track? Now that would be cool!
TL;DR: Some people can rumble, some people can't, but it doesn't really matter because it's a useless trick.