People usually think snakes are completely deaf and are only able to sense vibrations propagating through the soil. But researchers from Australia and the U.S. have proven that these reptiles also respond to normal sounds, naked-science.ru reported.

Snakes have no external ears, so people usually assume that these reptiles are incapable of hearing sounds that spread through the air and only respond to vibrations of soil, twigs, rocks and other supports. That is why tourists walking in snake places are recommended to stomp louder, to warn the legless reptiles of the approaching man and give them an opportunity to crawl away.

But a study conducted by scientists from the University of California (USA) and the University of Queensland (Australia), the results of which were published in the journal PLOS One, showed: snakes actually respond to sounds that spread through the air, and can potentially distinguish even human voices. The experiment was conducted on 19 reptiles belonging to five families, so this feature is not unique among creepers and is likely inherent in all land snakes.

The authors of the work used two types of sounds: one spread only through the ground and could be felt by snakes through the vibration of the ground, the other was heard only in the air and had to be perceived by the inner ear of the animal. It turned out that although snakes definitely perceive sounds spreading in the air, the reaction depends strongly on the species: while pythons move towards the sound, taipans and deathsnakes, on the contrary, tend to crawl away.

The type of reaction probably depends on the size and general behavior of the snake: pythons are relatively large snakes with few natural enemies, so they may primarily view the source of the sound as a hiding place for potential prey. Most other snakes are significantly smaller, they have to worry about predator attack and exercise caution. Thus, to call snakes completely deaf is incorrect. But scientists have yet to find out what kind of sounds these reptiles hear and how their reaction differs depending on the tone of the sound and the type of snake.