前英国国会议员现评论家马修?帕里斯在最近的一篇专栏中提到，随着年龄的增长，他本来就大的耳朵变得更大了，他觉得有些尴尬，正在寻找使耳朵缩小的方法。

Parris may not realize it, but he was writing on the 20th anniversary of one of the first scientific studies of ear size. Anecdotally, it had always been felt that old blokes tended to have bigger ears than everyone else. In July 1993, James Heathcote, a GP in Bromley, and a group of his colleagues set out to test the observation. They measured the ears of a randomly selected group of 206 of their patients over the age of 30, and calculated that ears increased by an average of 0.22mm per year – a centimeter (or just under half an inch) over 50 years.

帕里斯可能不知道，他写这篇文章之时正是有关耳朵大小的最早一项科学研究的二十周年的日子。1993年7 月，伦敦布罗姆利区的一名非专科医生詹姆斯?希思科特和他的同事们开始观察耳朵大小。他们从自己的病人里随机挑选了206名30岁以上的病人，测量他们的耳朵，计算发现耳朵每年平均增长0.22毫米，50年就能长1厘米。

Heathcote's findings were backed up by Japanese data published in 1996 and by an Italian study in 1999. Several reasons have been adduced for the growth. Ears (and indeed noses) sag with age, thanks both to a loss of elasticity in the skin and to the effects of gravity. Earlobes droop, a phenomenon that can be accentuated by heavy earrings. More controversially, it has been suggested that because, unlike bone, cartilage continues to grow and ears are made of cartilage, that may also account for the phenomenon.

后来，1996年日本发表的研究数据和1999年意大利的一项研究证实这一发现。研究中已列出的耳朵随年龄增长而变大原因有以下几种：由于皮肤失去弹性以及重力的影响，耳朵（鼻子也是）会随着年龄的增加而下垂；耳垂下垂，如果戴着重重的耳环，这一现象可能加重；更有争议的一个原因是，有人提出，软骨不像骨头，会继续增长，而耳朵是由软骨构成的，这可能也算作耳朵不断增大的原因之一。