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Various species of worm boasting ears in the strangest places , include on their cervix and under their wings . Now , a newfangled examination of 50 - million - year - old cricket and katydid fossils finds that these funny ear evolved before even the appearance of the predators that these spike can take heed .
Crickets , moth and other fast insects can hear the radical high - pitched sonar of hunting bat , a natural endowment that helps them avoid being eaten . investigator suspect that the coming into court of bats on the scene touch off the phylogenesis of these raw ears . But the Modern research reveals that crickets and katydid had modern ears 50 million years ago , beforeecholocating batsevolved .
Fine-grained lake sediment covered and buried the animals that lived in the Green River Formation, preserving them in exquisite detail.
" Their cricket bat - observe abilities may have simply become apparent later , " discipline researcher Dena Smith of the University of Colorado , Boulder , allege in a statement .
Insects have evolved pinna at least 17 time in different blood line , and other insects , such as the blue morpho dally , may even be able to discern between low and high pitches with their primitiveunder - annexe ears . But the fossil record has been too sparse to determine whether bats can take credit for certain bugs’hearing boost .
Smith and her fellow Roy Plotnick of the University of Illinois at Chicago turn to the Green River Formation , a series of lake deposits in Wyoming , Utah and Colorado thatpreserved ancient insectsin remarkable contingent — down to the nervure in their wing and the hairs on their leg .
That level of particular is key , because the researchers were looking for katydid and cricket ears . These insects hear using tiny oval cavities just under the knees of the front legs . Each cavity is the size of it of the oculus of a acerate leaf .
The results , issue in the January 2012 issue of the Journal of Paleontology , revealed that these ancient insect had ear well-nigh superposable to cricket and katydid ears today . That intend that these insect evolved their supersensitive hearing before bat predators came to be . ( The world’soldest batscome from the same time period as these worm , though not all of them used echo sounding to hunt . )
" The next step , " Smith say , " is to look for ears in other insect groups . "
