Curious?

[Mendel's Balls]

According to "Ball Pythons: The History, Natural History, Care, and Breeding", by Dave and Tracy Barker:

Page 25- Hearing
"No, snakes are not deaf, even though this misconception has been accepted as dogma for decades....

Snakes, including ball pythons, have a well-developed inner ear on each side of the head. Each inner ear is connected to the quadrate bone by a columella."

Great find!

It makes sense considering an external ear opening is not what enables an organism to hear...it's the inner ear, specifically the cochlea.

Here's some other links of interest.

http://coloherp.org/cb-news/Vol-29/cbn-0201/index.php
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http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/54/2/349

This one links and references several other papers of interest.

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http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi...10.1086/377052

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http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~hiroko/snake/index.htm

This uses audio filters to model how a snake might hear.....notice how a snake can hear a lion (one of its natural predators), but not other animals.

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It appears from the literature that they can hear not just ground vibrations but also airbone vibrations. They use their body surface as an "outer ear" so to speak.....this is termed "somatic hearing".