James Rule

speaker

92 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 31 Jul

James Rule’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

Appearances

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The Science Show · Looking inside cells, and how seals hear so well underwater · 31 Jul 2026 podcast

But that is because we can't hear well underwater.

And so if you actually put a hydrophone down there and...

you stop and listen, the ocean is actually quite noisy.

Fish actually make sounds.

I mean, this is something one of my colleagues told me recently.

Sharks make sounds too.

Sharks vocalize.

It's a da-dun, da-dun.

No, no, not like that.

It's sort of like...

They sort of gnash their teeth together to make a little noise.

So the ocean is quite noisy and marine animals vocalise a lot.

So seals can listen in on that to find prey, to avoid predators.

But another reason why they hear underwater, and I think this is the one that's most important to them and all animals really, is to hear each other.

As we talk to each other right now, we're communicating in air, and that is a thing that the mammal ear is really good at doing, and a lot better than most other mammals.

So our ears have a very special job in that sound waves travel through our ear canal to our eardrum, and then our eardrum vibrates when the sound hits it, and our middle ear bones vibrates in our ear.

And our middle ear bones are an evolutionary innovation.

They have a very important job of...

A, they amplify sounds and make them more powerful.

And B, the middle ears essentially help filter useful sounds.

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