suecornish said:
I've learned not to trust Wikipedia because people can change the entries. But sound travels by vibrations in the air, sound waves, and snakes can pick up the sound waves.
Maybe I should talk in a booming voice to Gaia. :shrugs:
There was a time back in my youth when everyone said that dogs don't see color. Now they know dogs do see color, in a fashion. So science is ever changing. I have a hard time believe "facts" written people who don't own snakes and have not done any behavioural observations.
:crazy02:
I disagree completely, if you follow the listed sources, they lead to good research done on snakes involving their perception. Just because people "can" change things on wikipedia, doesn't mean you can immediately discount it as an extremely useful source. Most rogue alterations are detected very quickly, and many users are quick to delete un-cited information. You can think what you want about the facts, but please do not go against what I'm saying, "just because." If you want to prove something wrong go to wikipedia, look up the sources, and go do your own research. But based on reading the research already done, and being a molecular and cellular biology major for the last 3 years, I find the research extremely plausible. Here are some more.
For unbelievers, you can follow the sources which lead to a great article done by Wever, E. The reptile ear: Its structure and function. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 1978. I would summarize the information, but summaries are easy enough to find -> google search "the reptile ear")
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http://www.anapsid.org/torrey.html (
So how can a snake hear, lacking external ears? By having equivalent structures on each side of its head. The skin and muscle tissue on each side of the head cover a loosely suspended bone, called the quadrate, which undergoes small displacements in response to airborne sound. The quadrate motion is transferred by intermediate structures to the cochlea, which produces electrical signals on its hair cells that correlate with the airborne sounds (within a range of intensity and frequency determined by the ear system) and are transferred to the brain.
Cochlear signals are present in functioning ears of all classes of vertebrates from fish to mammals, while animals that are congenitally deaf produce no such signals, so their presence in response to sound is taken as an indication of the hearing sense. Wever and co-workers [1] developed techniques to measure the hair-cell signals in lizards, snakes, and amphibians, which involved anesthetizing the specimen, inserting a very thin wire probe into contact with a hair cell, and measuring the acoustic signal level needed to produce a specified hair-cell signal (typically 0.1 microvolt). Various experiments were performed to demonstrate that the hair-cell signals were in direct response to airborne sound and not to mechanical vibrations from the medium on which the specimens were placed.
According to Porter [2], the auditory response of snakes in the range of 200 to 300 Hz is superior to that of cats. Hartline and Campbell [3] investigated the transmission of airborne sound through the snake's skin and lung into the inner ear. Wever's results show that this type of transmission, called the somatic mode, is much reduced compared to that through the skin to the quadrate, which is the main mode of hearing.
How are the cochlear responses to be interpreted? Wever points out that it is often difficult to determine the role of hearing in lower forms such as reptiles. It is possible that snakes make less use of the auditory sense than other animals. He notes that the maximum sensitivity occurs in the frequency range of noise made by movements of large animals, so detection of such sounds could function as a warning to snakes to be motionless, a common defensive action with animals. (Although not discussed in the references I was able to check, there is also the question of how the cochlear signals are used in the snake brain. Is it possible that the ability to process this information has been or is being lost?) So the next time you meet a snake on the Reserve trails, be careful what you say to it, for the snake may hear you.
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Of course this is for general snakes, but I'm sure the information would apply to cornsnakes as well.
