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snake's hearing
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by hornman on May 22, 2008
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it has been previously thought and written that snakes do not hear. I have recently been told that this may not be accurate. what do you know about this?
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RE: snake's hearing
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by Cro on May 22, 2008
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Douglas, Thank You for filling out your profile.
The topic of Snake's hearing has been discussed here many times in the past, and I would encourage you to do a search on the Experts forum first so that you are familiar with the past topics.
Snakes are able to pick up vibrations from the ground, and from the air if the vibrations are intense enough. If a air-borne vibration is of such intensity that it causes a vibration in the lower jaw bones of snakes, that is transferred to the snake the same way as vibrations it would pick up from vibrations in the ground, then the snake might react to that type of intense stimulation.
I am not sure we would call that "hearing" though.
You can stand next to a snake and scream your lungs out, and the snake will not react to that at all.
Perhaps we should call this vibration sensing, instead of hearing, as a snake is lacking some of the mechanisms required for "hearing."
If we had an opera singer who was capable of creating sound waves that could shatter a glass, those same sound waves might be capable of vibrating the jaw bones of a snake, and that vibration might be transferred to the snake. I am not sure we should call that hearing also.
There are bats that generate sound waves that most humans do not hear, but the bat is capable of hearing those sounds when they bounce back off an object. So, can the bat hear? Sure. But to a human, the sounds that bats make would mostly be silent.
We can blow on a dog whistle, and our dogs can hear the sound, however, most humans can not hear the sound of a dog whistle. Is it still hearing ? Sure, if you are a dog.
If you go to a Black Sabboth concert, and they play Iron Man so loud that you can feel the vibrations from the speakers in your body, but lets say, you were wearing ear plugs, so you could not actually hear the sound, but you could still feel the vibrations, well, would you be "hearing" ??? The vibrations would be transferring to parts of your inner ear, but you would still not be hearing in the normal sense.
So, as far as snakes "hearing" you really need to decide just what hearing is. If we are talking about the normal range of sounds that are used and heard by humans, then snakes do not "hear" those. If you are talking about intense sounds outside of that, that are capable of setting up vibrations in the bones of the snakes, then snakes can sense some of those. However, it is still debatable if that can be called "hearing."
Best Regards JohnZ
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