It has been over six years since the first A Quiet Place movie was released, and we were introduced to some very unattractive aliens with supersonic hearing abilities. On the bright side, many people in the hearing-health care fields thought it was great that cochlear implants, hearing aids, and sign language were put in the spotlight!
The most recent installment of the trilogy, A Quiet Place: Day One, gave us a much closer look at these aliens. According to Spivack (2024), inside the aliens’ segmented heads, “…a red, pulpy interior holds their highly responsive auditory equipment.” We have a corollary right here on Earth—the star-nosed mole. Giant claws? Check. Hidden eyes? Check. An organ that opens and closes with 22 tentacles? Check. Wickedly fast and deadly? Check.
Star-nosed moles can hear, but rely on their nose and hands to feel their way around underground. Their nose is so sensitive, it can distinguish between numbers of blood cells on the micron level. The best part is that this mole is the world’s fastest eater. It feeds, identifies, and eats something in about a quarter of a second. We are lucky those aliens do not exist to hear and eat us, and even luckier the star-nosed mole does not eat humans.
Reference
Spivack E. (2024) The aliens from a quiet place: day one most closely resemble this shocking animal. Inverse.(accessed July 30, 2024).
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