Jakarta – The cicada has a distinctive sound at night. So, the question arises, can cicadas hear that loud noise? What is the anatomy of the ear?
Quoting from detikEdu on Sunday (12/3/2023), Science News reported that Chinese researchers had reported the results of their research to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, regarding the discovery of 24 katydid fossils that are around 160 million years old. The research reveals the existence of the earliest known insect ear shape.
Researchers think ancient sound sensors, identical to cicadas, may have picked up the first short-range frequency calls and helped the insects hide from predators.
Have eardrums
The katydid belongs to the class of insects. It sends sound waves through the air. This makes it possible for insects to communicate at a greater distance from sight.
Meanwhile, some insects use their antennae to detect vibrations in the air. But different from cicadas. These insects have eardrums that function to help their hearing, like mammals.
Chunpeng Xu, a paleontologist from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology in China and colleagues, and colleagues suggest that because the well-preserved eardrums of insects are rare in the fossil record, it is not clear how the eardrums of the katydids evolved.
Ear Drum Function
Analysis of Chinese fossils boosts the known record of the ear ability of male and female cicadas to listen for potential mates or male competitors between 157 million and 166 million years ago, respectively.
Before katydid, the previous record holder for insect ears was the oldest cricket found in Colorado, which is about 50 million years old.
What’s more, the sound-producing structures of 87 fossil male katydid wings from China, South Africa and Kyrgyzstan dating to about 157 million to 242 million years ago may have produced a variety of calls, including high-frequency calls of up to 16 kilohertz. (For comparison, humans hear frequencies ranging from 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz.)
According to Xu, woodpeckers can communicate over short distances even when high-frequency chirps do not travel far.
This property of the katydid may be useful because the mammal’s hearing improves at the same time. By limiting range, multiple calls can help the katydid hide from predators and find swarms of insects.
This article has been published on detikEdu, read more here
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