You can Contribute to Feline Ear Research

You can Contribute to Feline Ear Research

William (Bill) T. Peake is working on a research project aimed at understanding the variations in the middle-ear structure of exotic cats, and how those variations provide more hearing capabilities specific to each species' size and life style. If you have an exotic feline which has passed on, you may be able to assist this research by providing the opportunity to study your cat's ears. Post-mortem material (the whole head) of any exotic species is useful, as long as the ears have not been damaged. If the frozen head is packed with dry ice it can be shipped Fed Ex overnight. A disposable Styrofoam ice chest might make a suitable container. Shipping expenses can be charged to the recipient, and the container can be returned. Your contribution to the research will be acknowledged in resulting publications, if you wish.

For more information contact:: William T. Peake; Eaton-Peabody Laboratory; Mass. Eye & Ear Infirmary; 243 Charles Street; Boston, MA 02114; Phone: (617) 523-3376; Email: wtp@epl.meei.harvard.edu

About the Research Team

Bill Peake is a Professor of Electrical and Bioengineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He works in association with the Eaton-Peabody Laboratory of Auditory Physiology at the Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary of Boston. He has had support from the National Science Foundation for this project.

About the Research

Three approaches are used to determine the interspecies structural variations and their effects on the ears' responses to sound. In one of these, museum specimens are used to determine structural variations of skull and ear dimensions. Measurements in over 400 specimens of 34 exotic cat species have been analyzed to give a comprehensive description of the variation in the Felid family.

The second approach is to measure acoustic responses in the external ear of live specimens, when they are anesthetized for other purposes (for instance, medical treatment or examination). (This approach has led to a completed study which is published in the J. of Comp. Physiol. A. Vol. 186, pp. 447-465, 2000).

The third approach is to use post-mortem material, which has been frozen before tissue has begun to decay. In these specimens, acoustic responses to sound stimulation of the ears can be recorded and the effects of modification of the structures can be determined. A paper based on this approach applied to a lion obtained from a zoo has been published (J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 101, pp. 1532-1549, 1997). The results showed that responses of the lion ear are similar to those of domestic cats, except that in the larger lion ear particular features occur at lower sound frequencies. An example of the kind of conclusion that might come from this study is the possibility that the air volume in the middle ear is larger in species from dry habitats in order to make their low-frequency hearing more sensitive to allow detection of prey, predators and conspecifics (for instance, mother-kitten communication) over larger distances.

Submitted by: John Turner