Various species of insects boast ears in the strangest places, including on their necks and under their wings. Now, a new examination of 50-million-year-old cricket and katydid fossils finds that these odd ears evolved before even the appearance of the predators that these ears can hear.
Crickets, moths and other flying insects can hear the ultra high-pitched sonar of hunting bats, a talent that helps them avoid being eaten. Researchers suspected that the appearance of bats on the scene triggered the evolution of these sensitive ears. But the new research reveals that crickets and katydids had modern ears 50 million years ago, before echolocating bats evolved.
"Their bat-detecting abilities may have simply become apparent later," study researcher Dena Smith of the University of Colorado, Boulder, said in a statement.
Insects have evolved ears at least 17 times in different lineages, and other insects, such as the blue morpho butterfly, may even be able to distinguish between low and high pitches with their primitive under-wing ears. But the fossil record has been too sparse to determine whether bats can take credit for certain bugs' hearing boost.
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