Science News Desk – There are many misconceptions about snakes in the world, there are many legends about snakes in India and India is not the only country in the world. Seeing the snake, it seems that it does not have the ears of snakes and it cannot hear. But in the new study, the scientists specifically examined how snakes react to sound. They found that snakes are actually also sensitive to sound vibrations and use them to kill their prey. Along with catching them, they also do this to defend themselves.
Toxinologist Kristina Ijdenek from the University of Queensland in Australia says that snakes are very delicate and slow creatures that are hidden most of the time and we still have a lot to learn about them. Since snakes do not have external ears, people think that they are completely deaf and can only feel the vibrations coming from the ground through their bodies. Researchers have long known that snakes are not deaf.
Snakes have long been believed to have a very weak sense of hearing compared to their other senses such as taste or sight (vision in snakes). For example, in the case of snakes, hatchling pine snakes are thought to have a more sensitive sense of hearing than they do, which makes it seem like they don’t have much hearing. But some such signs have also been seen that hearing is very important for crawling creatures, because through this they can be careful of their prey animals.
Ijdenek and colleagues studied 19 different types of snakes, ranging from subterranean to tree-dwelling and water-dwelling snakes, and tested them at sounds ranging from 0 to 450 Hz. Complete. He created some sounds in the ground and some in the air. Thus he tried to understand the perception of sound through the body as well as the feeling through the air i.e. through the ears. They found different responses of different groups but similar responses of snakes of the same genus.
From this, the researchers came to know that the ability of snakes to react is hereditary. Ijdenek reported that he observed that only female pythons were seen trying to move towards the sound, while taipans, brown snakes and others appeared to move away from it. At 5 kg and 2.7 m long, the nocturnal Wawa Woma python was the longest snake tested. Its prey (hunter) is less. They were less vigilant than smaller snakes, which tend to have more prey.