Lizards and salamanders may use lungs to hear, ...( hearing - one species of salamander t...)

hearing - one species of salamander that lacked lungs did not show the chest vibrations that the others did. And when the lungs of the other species were filled with oxygenated saline instead of air, the animals' chests no longer showed vibrations.

The study was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Comparative Physiology A: Sensory, Neural and Behavioral Physiology.

Hetherington put the animals on a table in a soundproof chamber. He bounced a beam of laser light off of each animal's skin to measure the skin's movement when exposed to various sound frequencies emitted from a speaker inside the chamber.

Low frequencies caused the greatest vibrations: peak motion ranged from 1,600 to 2,500 hertz in small newts (newts are a type of salamander); from 1,250 to 1,600 Hz in larger salamanders; and from 1,000 to 2,000 Hz in lizards. Lizards have middle ears, which is where the eardrum is located, and the skin covering this area of the animal's head vibrated at slightly higher frequencies of about 2,000 to 3,000 Hz. The lungless salamanders didn't respond at any frequency.

To determine how dependent the animals were on their lungs for hearing, Hetherington filled the lungs of three red-spotted newts and three green anoles (an anole is a tropical lizard that can change color) with oxygenated saline solution - the oxygen in the solution allowed the animals to keep breathing. Sure enough, the response t
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Contact: Tom Hetherington
Hetherington.1@osu.edu
614-292-0832
Ohio State University
4-Mar-2002

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