My turtles, like all turtles, don’t have any ears, but they always react to loud sounds. This got me wondering, are turtles able to hear, or are they just reacting to water vibrations? So I decided to do some research on this subject, here is what I found out.
Turtles don’t have external ears, they only have internal ears. This allows turtles to hear sounds, just not as good as animals with both internal and external ears.
Turtles are able to hear sounds, but because they don’t have external ears their hearing is not very good.
So, even if turtles don’t have external ears, they still have internal ears that allow them to hear sounds. Now, to better understand how a turtle hears let’s take a closer look at how its ears function.
How the Internal Ears of Turtles Work
The internal ears of a turtle are made out of two parts, the middle ear, and the inner ear.
Unfortunately, the way the two parts work is not very clear at the moment. Instead of telling you about all the possible ways they could function, I am just going to give a few sure details about what is known about them, and how turtles are able to hear.
Instead of external ears, as we have, turtles have small flaps of skin in their place (like the ones you can see in the picture above). Those flaps of skin are able to capture the sound wave to some extent and transmit it further to the middle ear. The role of the middle ear is to simply transmit the sound waves to the inner ear. When the sound waves reach the middle year they are processed and transmitted to the brain. When the sound wave reaches the brain the turtles are able to hear the sound.
The reason why turtles are unable to hear as well as other animals is because they lack external ears. The skin flaps that they have instead of ears are not able to capture a wide range of sounds, so the turtles are only able to hear very few distinct sounds.
The sounds that they are limited to are usually very loud and powerful sounds that produce a lot of vibrations in the air or very high-pitched sounds.
Even if their range isn’t very impressive, they are able to hear the sounds that most predators make when they want to attack a turtle. So even if they can’t hear very much, they are able to hear just enough to survive.
But it would be unfair to say that the hearing of a turtle is bad. This is because turtles don’t spend that much time on land, instead, they spend most of their time in the water, and that is where their hearing gets a lot better.
Underwater Turtle Hearing
Water is a very different medium from the air. The particles that compose water are a lot closer together than the ones that compose air, and this makes every sound be heard significantly louder. And depending on the type of ear, the sounds can become a lot clearer.
The skin flaps of a turtle are a lot better at picking up the vibrations of the sound in water than the human ear is. So while turtles are at a disadvantage while on the ground, they definitely have the advantage when they are underwater.
Actually, every aquatic animal only has internal ears. This is because an external ear can make things a little more difficult when it comes to hearing underwater.
Now that we know how the internal ears of a turtle work, and that their ears can work even better than ours in certain conditions, let’s make a comparison between human hearing and turtle hearing.
How Turtles Hear Compared to Humans
Up until now I kept saying that turtles lack external ears, we all know what external ears are, but not everybody knows how they actually work. And in order to imagine the difference between human and turtle hearing, we have to understand what is the role of the missing part.
The external ear is made out of 2 major parts, one is called the pinna and the other is called the ear canal.
The pinna is basically the “ear” that is on both sides of your head. Its role is to absorb sounds and pass them through the ear canal and send them to the middle ear. The eardrum is the part that takes those sounds and transforms them into vibrations that are passed through the rest of the hearing system and to the brain.
If you want to see a short explanation of how the human ear works you can check out this video:
So basically the role of the external ear that turtles don’t have, but humans do, is to amplify the sounds.
Knowing that we can easily say that turtles basically hear things just like us, just at a lower volume.
If you want to experience something similar to turtle hearing you basically have to nullify the amplified vibrations produced by the external ears. A simple and safe way to do this is to grab a pair of cheap foam earplugs and put them on. Or you can just use some pieces of cotton ( just make sure that you don’t put them too deep). If you want to try this, it’s important to remember that you don’t want to stop all sound, just some of it. So using a pair of expensive earplugs will not be realistic.
Related Questions
Can turtles recognize their owners? Turtles can recognize you and they will understand that you play an important part in their lives, but they will not feel any familiarity towards you like dogs or cats would. Overall turtles recognize their owners but not in a way you would expect. You can always read more about this in my article: Can Turtles Recognize Their Owners?
How long can a turtle stay underwater? It depends on the turtle, most sea turtles will be able to go for at least 5 hours without breathing, most aquatic turtles should be able to stay underwater for at least 20-30 minutes, land turtles on the other hand are not very good at staying underwater so 1 minute is the average you can expect them to be able to stay underwater. Here is a list of average times a turtle can spend underwater:
- Box turtle – 1 – 2 minutes
- Desert tortoise – 1 – 2 minutes
- Snapping turtle – 20 – 30 minutes
- Red-eared slider – 20 – 30 minutes
- Map turtle – 20 – 30 minutes
- Green sea turtle – 7 – 10 hours
- Leatherback sea turtle – 7 – 10 hours
- Kemp’s ridley – 7 – 10 hours
- Olive ridley – 7 – 10 hours
How many bones does a turtle carapace have? A turtle shell has around 50 bones. It’s really hard to see the difference between them since they are fused together, but biologists have determined that there are about 50 bones.
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