Many people believe that snakes are deaf. This assumption is due largely to the fact that snakes have no outer ear. They do however have an inner ear and are quite capable of hearing. In their own way. If you’ve gotten beyond 5th grade science you know that sound travels via waves that are invisible to the naked eye. Those sound waves vibrate our ear drums at different frequencies and we hear the results. A snake’s hearing works in much the same manner except instead of invisible sound waves traveling through the air a snake “hears” vibrations that travel through the ground. Snakes can also hear sounds traveling through the air, but to a much lesser extent so they primarily rely on ground vibrations.

The basic design of a snakes hearing

Anytime an animal (or person) walks on the ground it creates vibrations. In fact anything moving across the ground it creates vibrations. Most animals don’t hear or take notice of them but a snake is different. When the wave reaches the snake it is picked up by the bones and muscles in the snakes lower jaw. These vibrations are focused to a bone that is connected to the inner ear of the snake.

The advanced design of how a snake hears

For a long time it was believed that snakes could “hear” but couldn’t localize sounds. In other words they couldn’t pinpoint where something was and had to rely on their poor eyesight and smell to home in on their prey. Recently science has discovered that due to the elasticity of a snakes jaw vibrations in the ground can be localized to aid the snake in determining which direction a sound is coming from.

You can find more details about how this works in this article that gives an overview of a study done by University of Munich and University of Kansas researchers. The overview is that the snakes hinged jaw allows them to pick up the vibrations independently of one another depending on which side they come from.

There is evidence according to the study that the auditory neurons of the snake actually create a topographical map which allows them to pin-point prey by the vibrations they create. In a nutshell it is a form of echolocation.