I was thinking we need an analog to the statement “blind as a bat.”
Deaf as a _____? What animal would you put in the blank.
Democrat.
Sense of hearing is a tricky concept to define. Snakes for example lack auditory apparatus, but they can still feel vibrations through the ground or air. Fish lack external ears but can hear perfectly well. So how do are you defining hearing? Simple ability to detect vibrations in the surrounding fluid?
Leppard
I see what you did there.
I think that the green anaconda is probably the largest technically deaf animal. As Blake said, snakes can feel vibrations from sufficiently loud sounds, and they do have the internal remnants of ears. They lack ear openings.
Not really. Snakes lack an outer ear, sure, but they still possess fully-formed inner ears, complete with cochlea. See, for example, Snake Bioacoustics: Toward a richer understanding of the behavioral ecology of snakes, and Auditory atavism and integrated pathways for hearing in snakes (.pdf doc).
Granted, the range of frequencies which a snake can hear is limited (typically to low-end frequencies), but I don’t think they’re considered “technically deaf” these days.
Too late for edit: My guess is that the largest truly deaf animal is likely to be an invertebrate.
Should work for the op though, since its just looking for something comparable to “blind as a bat” after all. Maybe “Deaf as an eagle”? No more deaf than echolocating bats are blind but similarly less reliant on that sense due to the excellence of another.
Nah, needs the alliteration. “Deaf as a dinosaur”? Yeah, not really deaf either and depends on the species but again as deaf as bats are blind …
I note that the largest sponges grow up to eight feet across. Lacking nervous systems, they should qualify as deaf.
Do fish have ears?
Yes.
Giant squid?
I’m not sure what “technically deaf” means among non-human animals, but among humans, the vast majority of deaf people have some hearing, even if not functional for communication. Many people classified as “profoundly deaf” (90 dB or greater hearing loss) can usually hear some sounds such as a jet plane taking off overhead, or sounds within a particular range (usually low frequency).
So, if we want to fill in “deaf as a ____” it’s unnecessary that the animal in question be absolutely devoid of hearing.
Or … how about “deaf as a redwood tree.”
They do have to be devoid of hearing, however, to qualify for “biggest animal with no sense of hearing”, as the thread title asks for… Whatever the answer to that is, it ain’t a snake.
Unless it’s a deaf snake. But then, the answer could simply be as mundane as “a deaf blue whale”.
[Moderating]
wedgehed, political jabs are not permitted in GQ. No warning issued, but don’t do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Butterflies are deaf. So are starfish.
Actually “deaf” is a tough term to define. After all, animals don’t hear (or process sensory stimuli) the way a person does.
A snake “hearing” would translate into human hearing as a very tactile way of hearing.
Heck even humans don’t all hear the same way. The deaf and hard of hearing ones don’t. My experiance of hearing (being severely hard of hearing, even thou I can hear somewhat) is more like what a snake would hear ( I have a conductive loss due to having no eardrums or ear canals)
In the UK, we already have the phrase “deaf as a post”. Just throwing this out there in case it’s not common elsewhere and the OP had not heard of it, I know you’re looking for an animal really.
The Lion’s Mane Jellyfish can be a couple of metres across and have tentacles tens of metres long. I don’t think they can sense sound.
We have that in the U.S., as well.
The real problem I see with finding an analog to “blind as a bat” is that bats aren’t blind, even discounting their echolocation. It’s just one of those “folk wisdom” sayings that has no basis in reality. Therefore, a “deaf as a <whatever>” saying should be equally as false 