section_path: Other animals/Invertebrates
section_name: Invertebrates
paragraph_text: Invertebrates
  
  Only vertebrate animals have ears, though many invertebrates detect sound using other kinds of sense organs. In insects, tympanal organs are used to hear distant sounds. They are located either on the head or elsewhere, depending on the insect family. The tympanal organs of some insects are extremely sensitive, offering acute hearing beyond that of most other animals. The female cricket fly Ormia ochracea has tympanal organs on each side of her abdomen. They are connected by a thin bridge of exoskeleton and they function like a tiny pair of eardrums, but, because they are linked, they provide acute directional information. The fly uses her "ears" to detect the call of her host, a male cricket. Depending on where the song of the cricket is coming from, the fly's hearing organs will reverberate at slightly different frequencies. This difference may be as little as 50 billionths of a second, but it is enough to allow the fly to home in directly on a singing male cricket and parasitise it.
  
  Simpler structures allow other arthropods to detect near-field sounds. Spiders and cockroaches, for example, have hairs on their legs, which are used for detecting sound. Caterpillars may also have hairs on their body that perceive vibrations and allow them to respond to sound.