All of us have seen snake charmers playing their pipes before a snake. When a snake charmer plays his pipe, swinging it backwards and forwards or jerking up and down, the cobra raises its head and moves in rhythm with the music. There are many folklore about snake’s love of music. Some snake charmers even claim that they can summon snakes by playing on the pipe. Do snakes really love music?
The snakes do not have an auditory structure. They have a bony rod called columella auris. This bone extends from the fenestra oxalis to the quadrate bone. This bone has a special structure which helps it to detect the ground vibrations. But it cannot detect vibrations in the air. Due to this a snake detects an approaching ball.
In order to verify whether snakes can detect the vibrations produced in the air or on the ground, a number of experiments have been conducted with different species of snakes by P.J. Deoras at the Haffkins Institute, Bombay. He put a snake inside a tin box and studied the effect of soft music near the tin box. He found that any sound that caused the tin to vibrate made the cobra to raise its head. He took a snake charmer inside his snake farm and found no response for air borne music. However, it responded to ground music.
Experiments on five other species were also conducted. And again the findings were that the snakes did not respond air-borne music. However, they responded to the music of drum which creates vibrations in the box or earth.
In short, it can be said that snakes are very sensitive to sounds that create vibration on the ground. Because of this fact, the snake charmer hits his pipe with the ground to make the vibrations reach the snake. A snake charmer also hits the snake with the pipe and tries to excite him. Actually it moves its body only to keep an eye on the moving pipe.