The tragus is a small pointed eminence of the external ear, situated in front of the concha, and projecting backward over the meatus.

[1] Its name comes from the Ancient Greek tragos (τράγος), meaning 'goat', and is descriptive of its general covering on its under surface with a tuft of hair, resembling a goat's beard.

[7] The tragus allows echolocating bat species to vertically discriminate the objects around them, which is key to identifying where prey items and obstacles are in three-dimensional space.

Based on this study, the authors concluded that the tragus's function is to create acoustic cues to determine the direction of a target in the vertical plane.

[9] This article incorporates text in the public domain from page 1034 of the 20th edition of Gray's Anatomy (1918)