Can you wiggle your ears???

[IrishEyes]

While watching a movie, my children were asking about muscle control, and how much control we have over specific things our body does. So we spent an hour experimenting... It was a lot of fun, and we learned a few things...

 

Can you move your eyes independent of each other? We saw this on a movie and wondered why that person could do it and we couldn't. My son suggested that maybe we just hadn't learned to control the muscles in our eyes as well as we can control other muscles, so we practiced. We tried crossing our eyes, then moving only one eye in a different direction. It took a while, and a LOT of concentration, but finally all 4 of the older ones were able to move their eyes independently. The 2 younger ones had a much harder time, and are not able to master this yet. We've concluded that either their muscles are not as developed, that they are not yet able to exert that level of control, or that their brains have not yet developed the ability to target the specific muscles involved.

 

This also led to trying to 'flare' our nostrils, wiggle our ears, curl our upper lips, and waggle our eyebrows. They were unable to do any of those things at the beginning, but were each able to reach a certain level of accomplishment after practice. Of course, it was even more fun to see the look on people's faces when they showed what they had learned 'at school'. :) What was most fascinating was how most people had no idea that these things could be 'learned', or that they could exert that much control over their own bodies. Kinda sad when you think it through...

[Aquagem]

We tried crossing our eyes, then moving only one eye in a different direction. It took a while, and a LOT of concentration, but finally all 4 of the older ones were able to move their eyes independently.

 

As an easily-entertained eye-crosser in my younger years, I have a hint about the independent eye cross trick. Start out by stretching your arm out in front of you with a plain background, like a bare wall. Hold your index finger straight up (or the finger of your choice...) and focus on it. Start crossing your eyes, but just a tiny bit. I you do that right, you'll see the image of your finger split and become two. Stop right there, with both images in sight. Holding your eyes just a bit crossed, move your gaze to one or the other of the images of your finger. Don't uncross - you'll probably have to fight the reflex that automatically accommodates (focuses) and converges your eyes on an object.

 

You'll still be able to see both images of your finger, but now one of your eyes will be focused one of the images, and your other eye will be off in space and you can ignore it. Now continue to cross your eyes slowly, but keep your attention on the one finger. It's easy to do that because the finger is an easily discernible contrasting image against the plain background. As your eyes continue to cross, if you keep the finger in the center of view of one eye, it means that one of your eyes isn't moving, i.e., it's still looking straight ahead, while your eye muscles pull the other eye to your nose. When you get that to work, try it the other way, i.e., start by looking at the other image of your finger.

 

With a little practice, it becomes automatic to do this.

 

After you're accomplished at that, you can do the same thing to a person you are looking at several feet away. Start crossing, switch your concentration to one image of their face, and the rest is just the same. It's guaranteed to get comments like, "Ew, gross!" as you do repeated one-eye push-ups to the left, right, left, right.

[GAHD]

Yeah, kinda sad. I've learned some of those things myself; the head has a lot of muscles.

I can:

-flare nostrils

-move eyes somewhat independantly, but it gives me such a headach

-independant eybrow controll, all four cumulative corners on each eyebrow (try doing 'spock')

-2nd knuckle only flex on my right hand(the rest I keep straight, but I can't do it for my left)

-breath with one lung(do not move diaphram, only move the muscles in your chest cavity around the shoulder area& expand ribcage to one side)

- move my torso independant of my legs(try twisting your upper body 90 degrees to the side, without moving your shoulders, neck or hips.)

Too bad I still can't wiggle my ears after 8 years of trying....

[Fishteacher73]

I can do the chamealeon thing w/ my eyes...Freaks out my kids...The coolest thing that I could do as a child was to use my "x-ray" vision. When I laid in bed my TV was to the side. I had bunk beds, and the ladder to the other bunk was right infront of the TV. I had a rung that went right through the middle of the screen if I was watching TV lying down. If I slightly shifted one of my eyes, I cound get a slightly different picture, I could combine the pictures and get a composite image that did not have the ladder rung in it...kinda cool. :)

[Beef_Bourito]

I can move my eyes almost completely independantly, the only thing i can't do is move them both to the outer extremities at the same time (i can do i a bit but not nearly the whole way) I can wigle my ears, flare my nostrils, suck in my nostrils, by this i mean if you pinch your nose and suck in through it your nostrils will stay closed, I can do this without pinching my nose by breathing a certain way through my nose, i can curl my toungue, twist it upside down, and do the "three-leaf clover"(fold the outer-front corners in), i can bend my left index finger back and touch it to my wrist, i can superextend all my fingers up to about 60 degrees past straight (on my right ring finger, this one is so extreme because of an operation i had on one of the tendons but i can do it up to 45 degrees on the other fingers), i can dislocate both my thumbs and pop them back in and i can bend only the top of each finger and do my index fingers without moving the others.

 

Some of these (such as the curling of the toungue) are genetic, if someone does not have the gene to curl their toungue it doesn't matter how much time they put into it they will never curl it. Others are trainable (such as the eyes) I started by learning to cross my eyes, then cross them without using my finger, then i tried to turn on eye to the outer extremity whilst keeping the other at the inner extremity, once i could do that i experimented with only moving it half way, moving one at a time, spinning one whilst the other stays stationary at the inner extremity. Now I can move one in, spin the other, do a figure 8 with my eyes (one spins and stops at the inner centre of the eye and the other starts spinning but very fluidly) and move one in and out very quickly whilst the other stays stationary. Other "talents" could be either genetic or could be malformations without genetic testing or a pedigree chart i couldn't tell you some of them. For example: dislocating my thumbs, my father can do one hand but not the other, my mother can't, I believe there could be one gene for each thumb and that the capability of it is recessive, my father could be a purebred for the right hand and a hybrid for the left and my mother could be a hybrid in both, I could have been lucky enough to inherit the genes for both hands to be capable or it could be a coincidence that both my father and I are malformed in the thumbs. The nostrils (sucking them in) I am pretty sure is genetic, My mother can do it, both my sisters can do it, but my father can't, i believe my grandmother can do it but I'm not 100% sure.

 

My advice is to try to get your children to focus on certain muscles, what I try to do is see what muscles are involved in performing a certain movement and the try to isolate a certain muscle, or part of a muscle, i can flex almost any striated muscle on my body (mostly because i have to much time on my hands) and i can isolate certain parts of my shoulder. I don't think it has to do with brain development so much as it does on concentration, i started trying these on my own at around the second grade, starting with the eyes, then the toungue, then the rest in random order. If your children are easily distracted it might be more dificult for them to train their brain to isolate muscles but it is possible.

 

These excercises could help with concentration in school etc, or possibly lead to an endless suply of "Hey, look what I can do!" for me it was the latter.

[Elliot]

I can wiggle my ears independently and at the same time. Everyone can do it you just need to develop the muscle in your jaw. I can also wiggle my eyebrows, I can rase my right on and lower my left at the same time, and waggle them almost independently .