THEY famous for its reliable hunting skills. Reptiles that many people fear seek prey with the help of a very keen sense of smell and hearing.
Perhaps most people already know that snakes smell with the help of their tongues that they can detect and gather chemical information or prey around them.
But you rarely know that snakes also rely on hearing even though the snake’s ears look nothing like other animals. So do snakes have ears?
According to Chicago’s Field Museum herpetologist Sara Ruane, snakes have ears but not the external structure of the ear. Snakes only have ear bones which they use to hear.
As compiled by Live Science, the ear itself usually consists of three main parts, namely the outer ear, the middle ear and the outer ear. Each has a different function.
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 through vibrations.
While the inner ear converts these vibrations into nerve impulses that travel to the brain. And according to a 2012 study in the Journal of Experimental Biology, snakes lack outer and middle ears.
Snakes live equipped with a middle ear bone that connects the inner ear to the jaw. Because of this ear arrangement, the snake’s hearing becomes less sensitive to high frequencies.
“The inner ear is where the real nuts and bolts of hearing take place. Snakes just have the nuts and bolts in their ears,” explains Ruane.
Snakes are also said to respond to sounds in the air with a hearing frequency of up to 450 Hertz. Even so, snakes are probably the most sensitive to low frequency sounds.
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