The trouble with teenage tadpoles.Shortly before reaching full froghood, tadpoles Tadpoles are a psychedelic rock band formed in 1990 in New York City by Todd Parker (guitars/vocals) and Michael Kite Audino (drums.) In 1992, Nick Kramer (guitars/vocals), David Max (bass) and Andrew Jackson (guitars) of the fledgling Manhattan group, Hit, joined the Tadpoles go deaf for 2 to 4 days--and it's not from playing their stereos too loudly. Seth S. Boatright-Horowitz and Andrea M. Simmons of Brown University in Providence, R.I., discovered the hearing loss during the first study of tadpoles' underwater sound Underwater sound The production, propagation, reflection, scattering, and reception of sound in seawater. The sea covers approximately 75% of the Earth's surface. detection. Tadpoles hear far better than expected, the researchers report in the Dec. 23, 1997 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, usually referred to as PNAS, is the official journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences. , except during a brief stretch in adolescence. Other researchers studying the emergence of adult characteristics in tadpoles missed these aspects of sound detection because they had made measurements only in air, says Boatright-Horowitz. His and Simmons' work documents hearing loss in water just before the onset of the metamorphic met·a·mor·phic adj. 1. also met·a·mor·phous Of, relating to, or characterized by metamorphosis. 2. Geology Changed in structure or composition as a result of metamorphism. Used of rock. climax, when forelimbs and other adult features emerge. He suggests that a growing bit of cartilage important to adult hearing disables the tadpole's hearing before the system matures. |
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