Can Snakes Hear? Snakes have functional inner ears, but they don’t have outer ears. So how do snakes hear? With their jaws. When a desert viper rests its head on the ground, a bone in its jaw picks up minute vibrations in the sand. From the jaw, these vibrations are transmitted along a chain of tiny bones to the cochlea in the inner ear, allowing the snake to “hear” the faint footsteps of a mouse or other prey (Freidel & others, 2008). Similarly, a tiny frog found only in the Seychelles Islands lacks a middle ear yet is not deaf. Sound waves are amplified by tiny bones in the frog’s mouth and transmitted to the inner ear (Boistel & others, 2013).

AltoPress/PhotoAlto/Photoshot