The results come from more than a decade of targeted research led

by Shawn Xu’s lab at the University of Michigan. Building on others'

work that found the one-millimeter worms could smell, taste, and
touch, the team uncovered evidence that the worms also had the senses
of proprioception—the so-called sixth sense of body awareness—and
light detection."(Read how superhuman hearing may someday be
possible.)

“And since then, there’s only been one thing missing, and that is the
auditory sensation,” says Xu, a sensory biologist. “We’ve been spending
all these years searching for this one.”

The discovery, he says, presents a big leap in our understanding of both

how organisms can hear and how hearing may have evolved. It also
could expand the search for hearing in more organisms that lack
obvious ears, such as mollusks and other worms (including Darwin’s
earthworms) and shed light on animals whose hearing capabilities
scientists are still deciphering, like some salamanders and “earless”
frogs.