Snakes hear... in stereo!

Despite the lack of external ears, German physicists have found that snakes do in fact hear -- and they hear in stereo!

(T)hey do have complete inner ear systems, including functional cochlea, which are carefully connected to and stimulated by their lower jaw. Resting on the ground, a snake's jaw can detect vibrations as small as an angstrom in amplitude (a motion roughly as large the diameter of a single atom), which act like sound waves to the inner ear. The physicists performed a geometric study of the anatomy of horned desert vipers as well as the ground waves created by the footfalls of their prey. They showed mathematically that the jaw-to-cochlea system is sensitive to the frequencies of the prey's ground vibrations. From their analysis, the physicists also found that the snake's notorious ability to unhinge their jaws and swallow their prey whole means that the right and left side of their jaws can receive vibrations independently, and the snakes hear in stereo.

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