To the anatomist, there are three components to the ear: outer, middle and inner. To the lay public and to the aesthetic surgeon it is the outer ear, called pinna (after the Latin for the feather of a wing) that gets the attention. The external ear, pinna, is also confusingly called by anatomists, the auricle.

Certainly in animals which “prick their ears” to locate a sound, the external ear has a function. People, however, manage very well without it, and its positive or negative attributes are essentially cosmetic.

In structure, the inner and outer surfaces are common skin, the elastic substance is deformable elastic fibro-cartilage; this has very little in the way of a blood supply with the effect that an established infection in the pinna is likely to end up with destruction of the cartilage and deformity of the ear. There is a single piece of cartilage of a fixed shape, the skin is adherent to the cartilage and has a varying number of hairs – more in the naturally hirsute and more as age advances.

There are a number of named parts: the outer rim, folded inward on itself is the helix; anterior to that the bulk of the external ear is the flattened antihelix; deep to the helix, the upper antihelix forms a pocket called the triangular fossa; the external auditory meatus is in the center; the lobule inferiorly does not contain cartilage and is convenient for ear rings; at the front of the external ear, a nub of tissue points back, the tragus.