Do Sharks Have Ears? (7 Amazing senses)

For over 400 million years it is the sharks that have ruled the seas. These saltwater fish have special senses and are big, quick, and excellent hunters. Sharks come in more than 500 different species worldwide.

Sharks are able to hear quite well. To find food, they use their acute senses, which include hearing. Because sharks ears lack a prominent external shape, they appear different from human ears.

How Do Sharks Hear?

Hearing noises, vibrations, and pitches after a shock doesn’t require much work.

Three chambers and an ear stone make up a shark’s inner ear. It is easier to look for food because the chambers reverberate sounds.

The aural cavity is another crucial component of a shark’s ear. The shark can easily sense low-frequency vibrations thanks to its aural cavity, which is directly connected to its mouth.

Sharks have an external acoustic meatus, or inner ear, where sound waves enter and are processed by the brain.

Sharks can detect frequencies between 20 and 300 Hz, however they prefer and respond to irregular or lower frequency ranges (less than 40 Hz).

Inside a shark’s ears, tiny hairs known as stereocilia vibrate and are sent to the brain for interpretation.

You might be shocked to learn that a sharks ears contribute to balance as well.

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Where Are A Shark’s Ears?

It is unlikely that you will be able to notice a shark’s ears unless you are in close proximity to it.

The little apertures behind their eyes are their “external” ears. The two tiny holes are hardly bigger than a pin.

The ear is used for purposes other than hearing. Sharks communicate their approximate orientation by using their ears.

The ear stone, for instance, responds to gravity, assisting sharks in determining their location and overall orientation.

What Is the Number of Shark Ears?

All sharks have two ears and good hearing, although their ear parts are limited.

Only the inner ear is present in sharks. The look and function of a shark’s inner ear are largely comparable to those of humans.

Can a shark hear or see?

Sharks do not lack sight or hearing. As an alternative, they hunt, move, and survive by using their senses.

Because sharks utilize other senses to track animals, some people think they are blind, but this is untrue. Their vision is flawless. A shark can see up to fifty feet in front of them.

However, their vision is limited in certain ways. For instance, sharks struggle to discern one color from another.

Because of this, some sharks will attack people or surfboards in the water because they believe they are seals or tiny whales.

According to Australian researchers, young sharks have poor vision, particularly in cloudy waters, which can result in unintentional attacks on humans.

Sharks vision is up to ten times stronger than human vision in clear conditions.

Sharks have two inner ears that can detect loud noises from a great distance, thus they are not deaf either. When hunting, the average shark’s ability to hear sounds up to 800 feet away is useful.

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How Do Sharks Successfully Hunt Using Their Senses?

Compared to other animals, humans have five senses, which are not the strongest. Given that sharks have six to seven senses—a figure that is frequently disputed—they outsmart us.

Sharks have only six senses to aid in their hunting—smell, hearing, touch, taste, sight, and electromagnetism—according to the Smithsonian. Sharks often feed by themselves and wait for opportunities to hunt.

Sharks hunt tiny fish and invertebrates using these senses. Because they are bolder, large sharks, such as great white sharks, will hunt seals and small marine mammals.

1. Smell

Although not all sharks have the same sense of smell, some may detect blood up to a quarter of a mile away.

Sharks move swiftly and pursue their prey when they are injured and their blood spills into the water.

2. Hearing

 

Since hearing helps in balance and orientation, it is beneficial during shark hunting. A shark will often hunt by using all of its senses.

3. Touch

Sharks experience pain much like any other animal. Their teeth are among the hundreds of millions of nerve endings beneath their epidermis.

Because they can sense water currents and temperature changes while swimming, sharks rely heavily on their sense of touch.

4. Sight

A shark’s sense of sight is keen and powerful. A shark’s third eyelid glides over its eye as it is feeding to shield it.

Great White sharks shield their eyes from the blood and bones in the water while they feed by rolling their eyeballs backward.

5. Electromagnetism

Sharks have a sense of electromagnetism that humans do not. Sharks have a unique sense of electromagnetism since they can sense electrical fields on all living things. There are sensors all throughout a shark’s body, but electromagnetism has a limited range.

The sensors consist of a long tube filled with a gelatinous material and ampoules.

Sharks need to be within tens of centimeters of their prey for the electrical sensors to function because the majority of small fish and oceanic mammals have weak electrical impulses.

According to new research, sharks utilize their electromagnetic sensors to sense the earth’s magnetic field and use that information to navigate through the water.

Lateral line

Every fish has a lateral line, a unique sensory organ that enables them to pick up movement in the water around them. It can be found right under the snout’s skin and on both sides of the shark’s body. The lateral line is lined with fluid-filled grooves and hairs (neuromasts) that can sense the displacement of water. The shark feels its environment because of this, which is comparable to our sense of touch.

Pit organ

Each species has a different arrangement of individual neuromasts, also known as pit organs, which are distributed throughout the shark’s body, on the tail, and surrounding the pectoral fins.

Conclusion

Sharks do not have outer or middle ears, however they do have two inner ears. Sharks have no middle or outer ears, but their inner ears’ small hairs can readily detect sudden vibrations.

Sharks use all six senses to hunt aquatic creatures and tiny schools of fish every day.