Hearing discovered in cephalopods
A study by a Tiwanese scientist that has found that squids and octopi can hear, a question that has been debated for nearly a century. Sensory phyiologist Hong Young Yan of the Taiwan National Academy of Science in Taipei found through his experiments with the common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) and the Bigfin reef squid (Sepioteuthis lessoniana) that cephalopods use an organ called the statocyst is used to register sound.
A school of Bigfin reef squid.
BBC Earth News reports;
Yan’s team had to overcome particular technical challenges to investigate the cephalopods’ hearing ability. The usual way to prove that an organism can hear is to measure how its nervous system electrically responds to sound. But that can involve directly attaching electrodes to exposed nerves, an invasive procedure that could harm delicate cephalopods.
So Yan invented a non-invasive method, which involves placing electrodes on an animal’s body to measure the electrical activity in its brain. In this way, he could measure within just a couple of hours whether the brain of an octopus or squid responds to sound.
So, between a squid and an octopus, which has the best hearing? The scientists found that squid can register a wider range of sound, but that both species hear best at a frequency of 600Hz.
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