• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Snakes Can Listen Surprisingly Well, And Some Are More Timid Than Others

February 15, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

A study into the surprisingly complex mechanisms behind snakes’ ability to hear has found that, despite previous assumptions, many snakes are capable of hearing airborne sounds as well as sensing ground vibrations.

As snakes lack an external ear, it’s been widely accepted that they only sense soundwaves through ground vibrations via their belly scales. While this still appears to be the case, new research by a team at The University of Queensland has found some species also seem to react to sounds traveling through the air.

Advertisement

The team conducted 304 experiments on 19 captive-bred Australian snakes spanning five genera (Acanthophis, Aspidites, Hoplocephalus, Oxyuranus, and Pseudonaja). The sample included arboreal and terrestrial snakes, as well as heavy-body constrictors and smaller venomous species.

In a cleverly constructed laboratory space, they were able to monitor even minor reactions to the varying Hertz sounds presented, while still ensuring the researchers remained at a safe distance from some of their more questionable subject choices, like the coastal taipan, the world’s third most venomous snake species.


By playing the sounds from different parts of the experimental enclosure, the team coded for nine snake behaviors that could indicate auditory reactions. Of the species studied, all displayed genus-specific reactions to airborne noises.

While all species were observed moving away from the sound, woma pythons (Aspidites) were the only ones that seemed to move towards the source of the noise.

Advertisement

“Woma pythons are large nocturnal snakes with fewer predators than smaller species and probably don’t need to be as cautious, so they tended to approach sound,” lead author of the study Dr Christine Zdenek said of this interesting observation in a statement.

These genus-specific behaviors were also observed in the reactions of Taipans (Oxyuranus), which were seen exhibiting significantly more cautious and defensive behaviors to the airborne sounds. As Dr Zdenek theorized: “taipans may have to worry about raptor predators and they also actively pursue their prey, so their senses seem to be much more sensitive.”

The researchers estimate that genus identity explained more than 88 percent of sound reaction behaviors. However, a significant 3.6 percent was dependent on the Hertz frequency of the sound, with different reactionary behaviors being exhibited dependent on whether the sound was airborne or traveling through ground vibrations.

While the exact function of this capability is still unclear, the animals used in the study appeared to show differing reactions to the noises depending on the species. This suggests their hearing abilities have adapted to fit species-specific needs and behaviors. 

Advertisement

With little known about how snakes traverse their environments, further research into snake behaviors hopes to shed light on this misunderstood animal.

The paper was published in PLOS ONE.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Social network Peanut expands to include more women with launch of Peanut Menopause
  2. Marketmind: Watch those spiralling gas prices
  3. Thai central bank chief warns economy remains fragile, exposed to shocks
  4. Be On The Cutting-Edge Of Tech With This Top-Rated Learning Bundle

Source Link: Snakes Can Listen Surprisingly Well, And Some Are More Timid Than Others

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • “America Will Lead The Next Giant Leap”: NASA Announces New Milestone In Hunt For Exoplanets
  • What Did Neanderthals Sound Like?
  • One Star System Could Soon Dazzle Us Twice With Nova And Supernova Explosions
  • Unethical Experiments: When Scientists Really Should Have Stopped What They Were Doing Immediately
  • The First Humans Were Hunted By Leopards And Weren’t The Apex Predators We Thought They Were
  • Earth’s Passage Through The Galaxy Might Be Written In Its Rocks
  • What Is An Einstein Cross – And Why Is The Latest One Such A Unique Find?
  • If We Found Life On Mars, What Would That Mean For The Fermi Paradox And The Great Filter?
  • The Longest Living Mammals Are Giants That Live Up To 200 Years In The Icy Arctic
  • Entirely New Virus Detected In Bat Urine, And It’s Only The 4th Of Its Kind Ever Isolated
  • The First Ever Full Asteroid History: From Its Doomed Discovery To Collecting Its Meteorites
  • World’s Oldest Pachycephalosaur Fossil Pushes Back These Dinosaurs’ Emergence By 15 Million Years
  • The Hole In The Ozone Layer Is Healing And On Track For Full Recovery In The 21st Century, Thanks To Science
  • First Sweet Potato Genome Reveals They’re Hybrids With A Puzzling Past And 6 Sets Of Chromosomes
  • Why Is The Top Of Canada So Sparsely Populated? Meet The “Canadian Shield”
  • Humans Are In The Middle Of “A Great Evolutionary Transition”, New Paper Claims
  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • 130-Year-Old Butter Additive Discovered In Danish Basement Contains Bacteria From The 1890s
  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version