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The vibrations travel through their feet and legs before reaching the skull and inner ear, allowing elephants to effectively \u201chear\u201d through their bodies.<\/p>\n
Scientists have known about this ability for years, but exactly why it works so well has remained unclear.<\/p>\n
Now, new research points to elephants<\/a>\u2018 enormous middle ears and a surprising ability humans lack: they can close their ear canals to better detect vibrations traveling through their bodies.<\/p>\n Elephants have a hearing advantage<\/p>\n Study senior author Sunil Puria is an associate professor in the Department of Otolaryngology at Harvard Medical School<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEar canal listening devices such as AirPods can be annoying because we hear body-generated sounds louder than normal, for example, when we walk or chew,\u201d said Puria.<\/p>\n \u201cElephants, however, may use the ability to close their ear canals to their advantage in long distance communication<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201dWe found that elephants\u2019 bone-conduction hearing is significantly improved through their larger middle ear structures and possibly further enhanced by voluntarily closing the ear canal.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s a genuinely interesting contrast. The same body-generated noise that makes wireless earbuds annoying for humans might actually work in elephants\u2019 favor.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since they can shut off the usual pathway for airborne sound, elephants can tune into ground vibrations more effectively.<\/p>\n Putting elephant ears to the test<\/p>\n To understand what makes elephant hearing so effective, the researchers examined temporal bones from deceased elephants and human donors. This part of the skull houses the middle and inner ear<\/a>.<\/p>\n They attached these bones to a device that generated vibrations mimicking how sound travels through the body into the skull.<\/p>\n They then used a laser to measure how much tiny reflective markers on the middle ear bones moved in response to both low- and high-frequency stimulation.<\/p>\n The researchers sealed the ear canal with a soft foam plug throughout the experiment.<\/p>\n Differences between species<\/p>\n The results showed a clear difference between species. Elephant middle ear bones vibrated most effectively at around 400 Hz, while human bones peaked closer to 1.2 kHz.<\/p>\n Below these frequencies, the stapes, a small middle ear bone responsible for transmitting vibrations<\/a> to the inner ear, moved three to four times more in elephants than in humans.<\/p>\n Greater movement doesn\u2019t automatically translate into better hearing. <\/p>\n However, it does mean more vibrations reach the cochlea, the part of the ear that converts sound vibrations into neural signals the brain can interpret.<\/p>\n The team reasoned that elephants\u2019 greater sensitivity to low-frequency airborne sound would likely extend to bone-conducted sound as well.<\/p>\n It all comes down to size<\/p>\n The anatomical explanation turns out to be refreshingly simple. Elephants\u2019 middle ear bones weigh nine times more than humans\u2019, and their eardrums are seven times larger.<\/p>\n In most mammals, overall body size<\/a> determines organ size, so an elephant\u2019s middle ear isn\u2019t structurally unique compared to a human\u2019s. Its proportions simply reflect the elephant\u2019s vastly larger body.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause of their ear size, elephants can better transmit lower-frequency sounds to the cochlea,\u201d Puria explained.<\/p>\n \u201cThe specialization comes from the cochlea adapting to this greater input and generating neural responses that the brain can use and interpret for communication.\u201d<\/p>\n Elephants can tune their hearing<\/p>\n There\u2019s a second factor at play: elephants can voluntarily close their ear canals, something humans simply can\u2019t do.<\/p>\n The researchers hypothesize that elephants may contract a specific muscle when listening for frequencies around 200 Hz or lower. This muscle closes the ear canal, creating an effect similar to humans using earplugs or in-ear headphones.<\/p>\n That ability could matter a great deal for how elephants communicate over long distances.<\/p>\n \u201cElephants produce infrasonic vocalizations<\/a> in the frequency range of 10 to 20 Hz,\u201d O\u2019Connell-Rodwell said.<\/p>\n \u201cBased on our estimates, elephants\u2019 ability to close their ear canals could enhance their bone-conduction hearing by up to 30 times when listening to these infrasonic frequencies,\u201d Puria added.<\/p>\n \u201cHowever, the exact improvement in sensitivity would depend on the extent to which the ear canal volume is blocked by the muscle.\u201d<\/p>\n More elephant secrets remain hidden<\/p>\n The researchers are upfront about the study\u2019s limitations. Because procuring and preparing the tissue samples took so long, the cochleas<\/a> had been drained of fluid. This may have led the team to underestimate the true results.<\/p>\n Elephant tissue is also notoriously difficult to obtain, which limited the number of samples available for testing.<\/p>\n Even with those constraints, the findings open up a genuinely promising avenue for further research into how elephants perceive and use sound.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are few creatures more majestic than elephants,\u201d Puria said. \u201cTheir behavioral characteristics might be better understood through their hearing capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe need better data about their absolute hearing sensitivity across frequencies with air and bone-conduction stimulation.\u201d<\/p>\n The study is published in the journal Frontiers in Audiology and Otology<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014-<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elephants can hear something humans can\u2019t: conversations traveling through the ground beneath their feet. Along with trumpets and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-808468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}