Researchers have created a tiny silicon device that mimics the sensitivity of a fly's hearing mechanism.

The project, which comes from the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, was inspired by the Ormia ochracea fly, a parasitic insect that uses its incredible hearing to target crickets, said a school news release.

The barbaric Ormia ochracea species hunts down crickets so it can leave larvae on their backs; the fly larvae burrow into the crickets and eat them alive. The fly's tiny, specialized ears help it locate crickets simply by hearing their chirps. 

Just 2 millimeters wide, the device that imitiates the fly's "teeter-totter"-like hearing could eventually be used to develop hearing aids for people.

People have a "significant separation" between their ears, meaning that sound arrives at different times, but with the fly's tiny head, sound hits each ear at about the same time, study co-author Neal Hall told NPR.  

"It's like having two microphones in one that are linked together by this teeter-totter," Hall described.

The engineering in the fly's sensitive ears could be applied to hearing aids as well as smartphones or defense tracking devices. Researchers hope the incredible hearing ability found in the Ormia ochracea will eventually help people.

"It is the equivalent of if you were just standing on the ground and all of a sudden the ground starts shaking because there was an earthquake, and I told you I can tell just by my feet that the epicenter of the earthquake was in Costa Rica," said Hall, as quoted by NPR. "The fly does something equally remarkable in locating sound given the proximity of its ears."

The research team's findings were published Tuesday in the journal Applied Physics Letters. 

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