asal Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 I dont know if it might help, , but i am buying them for my cat, dog and horses. a lady discoverd that after she belled her goats, she stopped losing them to snakes. the vibration from the bells seemed to encourage the snakes to avoid the goats, who until now would spot the snake and so investigate, usually with fatal results. thats how I lost two of my poddy calves, wish I had heard about the bell option before that. Another friend just lost her dog despite a few thousand that 'almost' saved her, the antivenine saved her, trouble was she then had a reaction to the antivenine. So there are going to be a lot of brass belled mammals around this district now. cheaper and longer lasting than the ultrasound gizmos proporting to do the same job. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
persephone Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 It would be interesting to know which soundwaves are picked up by the snake's 'hearing'. if bells work ..then so should barking dogs? I am happy to have brass bells tinkling :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asal Posted January 3, 2013 Author Share Posted January 3, 2013 It would be interesting to know which soundwaves are picked up by the snake's 'hearing'. if bells work ..then so should barking dogs? I am happy to have brass bells tinkling :) Ive been told snakes are deaf, but Im willing to try anything, although at least I will know where anyone is Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
persephone Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 Snakes do not have 'ears'..however there is a belief that some sounwaves are picked up by a part of the jawbone , and I think lungs ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asal Posted January 3, 2013 Author Share Posted January 3, 2013 found this, good ole google Melissa Kaplan's Herp Care Collection Last updated February 27, 2012 Shhh! The snake may hear you ©1998 John Carson. Torrey Pines State Park Can snakes hear, you ask? A few decades ago the answer was no, for - obviously - snakes don't have external ears. And any way, snakes don't appear to respond to loud noises. Further support for this view is found in some current zoology texts, which still report that snakes lack the sense of hearing. But research begun about 35 years ago, especially the extensive investigations over many years by E.G. Wever and associates at Princeton University, has shown that snakes have a hearing capability(at least in an electrophysiological sense) comparable to that of lizards. This should not be too surprising, for snakes and lizards share some common features and are thought to have common ancestors. 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. Acknowledgements - My thanks to R. Haase, research associate with the UCSD Biology Dept., for informative discussions and reviewing this article. References [1] Wever, E.G., The Reptile Ear, Princeton University Press, 1978 [2] Porter, K.R., Herpetology, Sanders Co., 1972 [3] Hartline, P.H., and Campbell, H.W., "Auditory and Vibratory Responses in the Midbrains of Snakes, " Science, vol 163, 1221, (1969) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
persephone Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 :) lots of bells ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 It would be interesting to know which soundwaves are picked up by the snake's 'hearing'. if bells work ..then so should barking dogs? I am happy to have brass bells tinkling :) Lol. I wondered the same thing. And why cant they hear people? Oh thats right...because snakes dont have ears. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dogsfevr Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 I hope you also buy ear plugs to not hear the bells It is the most annoying sound around Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeelerLove Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 Apparently leaving a radio playing will also deter them due to the vibrations. Not sure if its true or not but a friends dad swears by it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
persephone Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 They do get used to things too :) They live in our garage shed.. We used to get them regularly in the pump shed (not electric pump..a big noisy diesel) ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewang Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 Bells could in fact work due to the fact that they are able to produce pretty high frequency sound waves which can travel further. Snakes will be able to pick up the vibrations from afar and hopefully move away. As to persephone's idea that a dog's barking is a sound and should deter the snakes, is correct but a dog barks when she is in sight of the snake, literally in the face of the snakes. This leaves the snakes 2 options, fight or flight. This is why dogs still get bitten even thought they were barking at the snake. I learn all these from animal planet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
persephone Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 but a dog barks when she is in sight of the snake, literally in the face of the snakes. This leaves the snakes 2 options, fight or flight. This is why dogs still get bitten even thought they were barking at the snake.<br style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(238, 242, 247);"><b><br style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(238, 242, 247);"></b>I learn all these from animal planet. :) We have quite a few dogs..and they bark a lot (we live in the country , and they are allowed to bark ,within reason they bark at birds, at strange cars, at each other ....) We still have a number of snakes way too close to the dogs and the house Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asal Posted January 3, 2013 Author Share Posted January 3, 2013 but a dog barks when she is in sight of the snake, literally in the face of the snakes. This leaves the snakes 2 options, fight or flight. This is why dogs still get bitten even thought they were barking at the snake.<br style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(238, 242, 247);"><b><br style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(238, 242, 247);"></b>I learn all these from animal planet. :) We have quite a few dogs..and they bark a lot (we live in the country , and they are allowed to bark ,within reason they bark at birds, at strange cars, at each other ....) We still have a number of snakes way too close to the dogs and the house Exactly. too many times has some snake decided to imitate the garden hose across the doorstep. Times like that reinforces my desire to move to NZ or Ireland.......... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
persephone Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 Exactly. too many times has some snake decided to imitate the garden hose across the doorstep. Times like that reinforces my desire to move to NZ or Ireland.......... YESSSSSS!! :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smooch Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 (edited) Last summer my working dog Jimmy decided it was a good idea to round up a brown snake. Only for the Indian Mayna birds Jimmy would probably have been bitten, the birds were making a hell of a noise so I got up to see what was going on, Jimmy was in the duck pen with nose glued to the ground, ran out of duck pen and straight past the birds, than I spotted Jimmy run in a circle on the lawn, I spotted the snake, yelled at Jimmy who responded straight away and left the snake. This summer i put 2 of the bird toy bells onto his collar hoping that a snake would hear him and go away. If it doesn't work I can at least hear if Jimmy is running around outside and check on him. Last week one of our rescue Galah's was going off his head, I looked outside and here is a brown snake going straight towards the cage, under the cage, I made sure both dogs were inside and wouldn't let them out unless I was with them. I don't know where the snake went, haven't seen it since. Edit to add Jimmy didn't bark at the snake, only for the IM I wouldn't have known there was a snake. At least the IM were good for something lol. Edited January 3, 2013 by smooch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kajirin Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 (edited) Wondering if they were the smaller cow bell type bells on the goats. They have a much lower resonance, not like the higher tinkling sound of little ball bells [sleigh bells?] ETA did have bells on Scout's collar [mainly to hear where he was]. They only lasted a day, he lost them on a bush somewhere in the garden [started checking the 3 acres of garden but got caught up and slashed my ankle on barbed wire that had fallen into some weeds...yeah trust me to trip on it lol]. Edited January 3, 2013 by Noishe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ash1 Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 Very interested in this theory (would be fantastic if it was proven true), but just wondering how the dogs would feel about having a bell around their necks? Wouldn't it drive them crazy with the constant noise, especially bearing in mind that their hearing is so much more sensitive than ours? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kajirin Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 Think they get used to the bells, have seen videos of gun dogs wearing bells whilst out in the field. They still worked, pointed out game, fetched etc. and didn't seem phased by having bells on their collar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kajirin Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 (edited) found a vid of a 12 week old Brittany pup in field training with a bell =] just goes on doing what he's doing and the bell doesn't phase. Edited January 3, 2013 by Noishe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
persephone Posted January 3, 2013 Share Posted January 3, 2013 (edited) the smaller cow bell type bells on the goats. They have a much lower resonance, not like the higher tinkling sound of little ball bells [sleigh bells?] Yes! I use brass bells on my goats ,usually ..they are quite heavy ..I can't imagine anything making the same sound light enough for cats/small dogs (if anyone needs to bell a dog when free running/or if there are vison impaired folks in teh house , etc ... THESE are excellent - very audible, but not 'loud', and it soon becomes easy to work out where and what dog is doing ;) )..little 'rod bells' for use on fishing rods. Edited January 3, 2013 by persephone Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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