Snakes Have Ears

Snakes are animals that have a limbless body, flicking tongues and the ability to devour prey whole. They depend on their sense of smell to hunt prey, although they do use sight and sound too. The new study shows that Snakes have ears. This study was published in live science.

Sara Ruane, a herpetologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey said that Snakes don’t have an external ear structure. However, they do have ear bones in their heads that they use to hear.Animals hear a noise in a different direction and shift their external ear in order to better capture that sound in case it happens again. An internal ear is the part where the actual nuts and bolts of hearing happen.Snakes only have the nuts and bolts part of the ear.

Ears are made up of three major parts. The outer ear focuses sound on the eardrum, which separates the outer ear from the middle ear. The middle ear contains three bones that transmit sound from the eardrum to the inner ear via vibrations. The inner ear turns these vibrations into nerve impulses that travel to the brain.

In 2012, a study in the Journal of Experimental Biology Snakes lacked both an outer ear and middle ear. However, they have one middle ear bone that connects the inner ear to the jaw. This enables Snakes to hear vibrations, such as a predator creeping closer on the forest floor. However, they’re not as proficient at hearing sounds transmitted through the air. Due to this ear setup, Snakes hear only a narrow range of frequencies. They can hear low frequencies but not high frequencies, because those sounds are mostly transmitted through the air. Royal pythons are best at hearing frequencies between 80 and160 Hertz.