Do snakes have ears?
Snakes have no outer ears or eardrums, but they do have inner ears. They mainly sense vibrations through their jawbones, and can also hear some low-pitched airborne sounds.
A snake's inner ear is connected to its jawbone. When a snake rests its jaw on the ground, vibrations travel through the bone to the inner ear, letting it feel footsteps and movements nearby. For a long time, people believed snakes were completely deaf to airborne sounds.
Research has shown that snakes can detect low-frequency sounds in the air, roughly between 50 and 1,000 hertz, a fraction of the range humans hear. A 2023 study found that some snakes reacted to sounds played in a room, with some species moving away and others moving toward the sound.
Snake charmers
Snake charmers seem to make cobras dance with music, but the snakes are responding to the movement of the charmer and the pungi, the instrument, not the tune. The cobra treats the swaying instrument as a possible threat and follows it with its raised head.
Did You Know?
Snakes smell with their tongues. They flick them to collect scent particles, then touch them to a special organ in the roof of the mouth called the Jacobson's organ.