Lizards and salamanders may use lungs to hear, ...( o sound - the vibrations - dropped....)

"It practically disappeared," he said. "While sound may get in through other routes, the lungs are clearly the most sensitive to sound waves," Hetherington said.

After filling the lungs with the saline solution, the vibrations noticeably decreased by about 90 percent in all of the animals. The animals' sensitivity to sound was restored when the lungs were emptied and filled again with air.

While Hetherington knew from his previous research that certain frog species depended on their lungs to conduct sound, he wasn't sure before these studies that the same process held true in other amphibians and small reptiles, whose lungs are covered with ribs and muscle.

"Using the lungs to detect sound seems to be especially useful for small animals with really small lungs," Hetherington said. "Thinner body walls respond more readily to sound, so it may be that the lungs can capture a wide range of frequencies only in small animals."

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Contact: Tom Hetherington
Hetherington.1@osu.edu
614-292-0832
Ohio State University
4-Mar-2002