Scientists revealed this week that they have solved the mystery of why the Gardiner Seychelle frog can hear without an ear.
Gardiner frogs, which originate from the Seychelles Islands, are only a centimeter long, and can hear sounds because they use their mouth cavity and tissue to "transmit sound to their inner ears" according to a study reported in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."
Click here to view the PNAS website.
Sound waves make the eardrum vibrate, and then the eardrum delivers the vibrations using ossicles to the inner ear where hair cells translate them into electric signals delivered to the brain.
Experts originally thought that it was impossible to "detect sound" in the brain without a middle ear since 99 percent of a sound wave is "reflected at the surface of its skin" according to the journal.
"However, we know of frog species that croak like other frogs but do not have tympanic middle ears to listen to each other. This seems to be a contradiction," lead author Renaud Boistel from the University of Poitiers, said in a statement.
Researchers set up loudspeakers in the rainforest and broadcasted pre-recorded frog songs to determine if Gardiner frogs use sounds to communicate with one another, according to Xinhuant.com.
Male frogs in the rainforest responded to the songs, proving that they were able to hear the sounds.
The study indicated that researchers used X-rays images of the soft issue and the body parts with micrometric resolution to figure out which body parts help the frogs listen and communicate.
After a number of different simulations, researchers determined that the sound was received through the frog's heads. The mouth supposedly amplifies the frequencies and the sound is then sent through tissue and bones in the skill to the inner ear, according to the study.
"The combination of a mouth cavity and bone conduction allows Gardiner's frogs to perceive sound effectively without use of a tympanic middle ear," Boistel said.
The study was published on Sept. 2.
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