Two centuries ago, natural scientists believed that they had discovered reptiles. They said that animals, such as lizards and snakes, often depend on their senses of sight and smell, while their inner ears treat balance and others.
This arranged image has just been smuggled-literally. New research finds that a Gecko balance member also works as a sensitive microphone of the earth’s vibrations, giving the animal an additional feeling.
This discovery is important because it rewrites part of the evolutionary story of hearing. It hints that the old vibration path never disappeared when the vertebrates crawled on the ground; Just slide under the scientific radar.
TOKAY GECKO Study
The new study focused on TOKAY GECKO, the Hardy lizard, which is famous for its loud bark. In the depth of its skull, the Saccule, a liquid -filled bag sits a long -standing mark as a balance sensor.
The researchers gently recorded nerve signals while offering low-frequency tremors-thinking about the deep abyss between 50 and 200 Hz. SacCULE lighting.
These frequencies are much lower than the range that is usually discovered by the Gecko eardrum, which indicates that the animal runs two parallel vocal channels: one for an air -carried newspaper, one of the bottom shocks.
“The ear, as we know it, hears the mobile sound by air. But this old inner path, which is usually associated with balance, helps to discover the vibrations that are transmitted through the media such as land or water,” Catherine Car, a distinguished university institution in biology in studying in study. ” Maryland University.
“This path is found in amphibians and fish, and now it has been proven that it is preserved in the lizards as well. The results we find highlights how the auditory system developed from what you see in fish to what you see in wild animals, including humans.”
Car and her colleagues published their results in Current biologyUnder the title “The auditory track to detect vibration in Tokay Gecko.” The leadership of the bench was a post -PhD researcher Dawi Han, who explored the idea for the first time during his postgraduate studies.
How some animals feel vibrations
It was narrated only electric effects part of the story. The team also set the Gecko brain and found a deportation station called Oval nucleus.
This pocket receives only the inputs from the SacCULE, and then redirects information to the higher auditory centers. It behaves like a dedicated vibration path, separate from the normal hearing bottom.
A similar brain nuclei appeared in the ancient New Zealand snakes and reptiles SPhenodonHint to a joint scheme across the reptile family tree.
“Many snakes and lizards were believed to be” silent “or” deaf “, meaning that they did not utter or hear good,” Han explained.
“But it turns out that it could communicate through vibrating signals using this sensory path instead, which really changes the way scientists have thought about the animal’s perception in general.”
All information roaming in the air, and even the bottom of the turtle roaming inside its nests, may circulate all the information by shaking its surroundings instead of screaming across the air.
The development of this new animal meaning
Fish depends on the inner ear organs to feel pressure in the water, while the amphibians wander in both water and the ground. Gecko’s work indicates that early Tetrapods carries a sense of vibration on the beach and keeps it alongside the ear -based hearing.
For millions of years, some lineages contacted them, but others – such as tokay – stick to it. This stability states biologists that development often reports old tools instead of getting rid of them.
“Think when you are at a live concert. It is very loud to feel your head and your entire body shaking in the sound field. You can feel music, instead of hearing it,” Car continued.
“This feeling indicates that the human vestibular system may be stimulated during these loud concerts, which means that our senses in hearing and balance may be closely related.”
Its point of view: Our balance members may be when the sounds become strong enough, which leads to no clarity in the line between feeling and hearing.
Why any of this issue?
“The effects of this research go beyond the world of reptiles,” Han said. “While we reveal these hidden mechanisms, we also gain a more richer and more accurate picture of how animals perceive and interact with their environments – and perhaps new visions in our sensory experiences.”
If the vestibular system is involved with the cochlea in extreme sizes, it may affect the treatments for balance or tinnitus disorders.
Engineers who design earthquakes or underwater microphones may also borrow tricks of elegant hair cells in SacCULE.
Nature does not stop surprising
It is now known that GECKOS, which clings to the walls of caves, is now shivering to get close to my footsteps. Snakes that flow through the paper waste are likely to feel prey. Humans, who vibrate in the upper squares, may participate in an ancient inner circle that we rarely recognize.
The new research opens a broader conversation on how vertebrates keep the tabs on its world – through both ears and bones.
By controlling the language of quiet vibrations, scientists reveal a sensory mosaic that extends to hundreds of millions of years.
The full study was published in the magazine Current biology.
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