music?

i know its probably a stupid question but i was wondering what level you can play music at as i know snakes sense the vibration? sorry to sound stupid but i like my music and dont want to harm my baby so have been playing it very quietly until i know better!

Music isn't a problem, they can't hear, its vibration you need to consider, as they can sense that.

Obviously the louder the music the greater the vibrations.

I have my music as loud as i want, but i keep my laptop on the far side of my room, and its on a desk,this goes very far in negating any vibrations, a guitar amp turned up however may cause distress...

although i guess the extent to which snakes can sense vibrations is anyones guess.

To be honest i would have thought walking past your vivarium is far more likely to cause vibrations and disturb your snake than loud music.

Basically i'd say, pump up the volume! it shouldn't be a problem.

Yeah as long as you dont have a speaker directly next to the tank and you dont have it at ear bleeding level you should be fine.

Just to play Devil's Advocate...

Consider that ALL sound is vibration. We have no idea what wavelength snakes feel these vibrations at, nor at which wavelengths vibrations can cause stress. Just because your speaker isn't vibrating the floor at a level which you personally can feel, does not necessarily mean it is not causing vibrations at a level which your snake can feel.

We also don't know to what extent snakes are truly "deaf". Again...considering that all sound is vibration, and snakes DO possess the inner-ear mechanisms which allow them to pick up sound waves, it is very reasonable to assume that snakes can hear on some level, albeit at a different perception than what we are used to, or what we consider "sound".

The difference between sound and vibration is only the perceptible wavelength at which the media(ground, water, air, floor, enclosure...whatever) is vibrating...

Now with all that being said...I seriously doubt that listening to your music is going to bother your snakes much. I play guitar, and I play through a rather loud amplifier at times(15watts in a small apartment is loud...I don't care what anyone says). My amp is in the same room as some of my snakes, and I don't see any reactions that cause me to believe that my guitar amp is stressing out my snakes.

In other words...play your music. I don't think the snakes mind...

(v_various cartoon)

QUOTED: http://www.anapsid.org/torrey.html (
So how can a snake hear, lacking external ears? By having equivalent structures on each side of its head. The skin and muscle tissue on each side of the head cover a loosely suspended bone, called the quadrate, which undergoes small displacements in response to airborne sound. The quadrate motion is transferred by intermediate structures to the cochlea, which produces electrical signals on its hair cells that correlate with the airborne sounds (within a range of intensity and frequency determined by the ear system) and are transferred to the brain.

Cochlear signals are present in functioning ears of all classes of vertebrates from fish to mammals, while animals that are congenitally deaf produce no such signals, so their presence in response to sound is taken as an indication of the hearing sense. Wever and co-workers [1] developed techniques to measure the hair-cell signals in lizards, snakes, and amphibians, which involved anesthetizing the specimen, inserting a very thin wire probe into contact with a hair cell, and measuring the acoustic signal level needed to produce a specified hair-cell signal (typically 0.1 microvolt). Various experiments were performed to demonstrate that the hair-cell signals were in direct response to airborne sound and not to mechanical vibrations from the medium on which the specimens were placed.

According to Porter [2], the auditory response of snakes in the range of 200 to 300 Hz is superior to that of cats. Hartline and Campbell [3] investigated the transmission of airborne sound through the snake's skin and lung into the inner ear. Wever's results show that this type of transmission, called the somatic mode, is much reduced compared to that through the skin to the quadrate, which is the main mode of hearing.

How are the cochlear responses to be interpreted? Wever points out that it is often difficult to determine the role of hearing in lower forms such as reptiles. It is possible that snakes make less use of the auditory sense than other animals. He notes that the maximum sensitivity occurs in the frequency range of noise made by movements of large animals, so detection of such sounds could function as a warning to snakes to be motionless, a common defensive action with animals. (Although not discussed in the references I was able to check, there is also the question of how the cochlear signals are used in the snake brain. Is it possible that the ability to process this information has been or is being lost?) So the next time you meet a snake on the Reserve trails, be careful what you say to it, for the snake may hear you.

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