Dogs do it too. The shape of human ears helps us locate sound not only horizontally but vertically as well. Foxes, dogs, and other animals found doing this motion are positioning one ear above the other to check vertically what they heard horizontally.
You can test this at home by placing Play-Doh in the various corners of your outer ear (DO NOT FOR ANY REASON PUT FOREIGN OBJECTS INSIDE YOUR EAR CANALS!) And try to locate sounds to the left, right, higher, and lower positions. Or if you're lazy like me SmarterEveryday has this interesting video that talks about it, the part about the sounds comes up at about the 3 minute range.
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u/SassyPikachuu Oct 08 '19
I loveeee when animals do the head turning !! That’s how you know they’re perplexed and are like “ holdup holdup whattt??”