Comparative Study of Anatomical Variations of External Ear Among Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba Ethnic Groups in Kano State, Nigeria

The task of establishing identity of unknown cases becomes quite difficult for investigating officers especially in cases of mass disaster, burns, drowning etc. where the face is severely disfigured. If the ears are left unharmed, in such cases the identity may be established using metric and morphological features of the victim’s ear, as it differs between ethnic groups, sex and geographic location. The present study was aimed at evaluating the morphological variations of the external ear among Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba Ethnic groups in Nigeria. This study comprised a total of 403 subjects that were randomly selected in which 145, 128 and 130 subjects were selected from Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba ethnic groups respectively. The photographs of the subjects were taken using Sony Hanicam DCR-SX53 camera and transferred to computer and three different observers were used to identify the studied parameters. After the comparison it was observed that the frequencies of the studied morphological parameters were not the same across the three ethnicities. Some parameters were more prevalent in one ethnicity than the others. Significant association between these parameters and ethnicity were obtained in morphological shape of ear, type of antitragus and concha shape. From the findings, it can be concluded that there is existence of variations in some of morphological parameters of the external ear across the three ethnicities studied.

Key Words: External ear, variations, Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Nigeria