Another mystery was solved today! For years I’ve wondered how complete, braying asses can stand to hear themselves talk when no one else can. The other day, mother nature provided me with the explanation.

Bullfrogs.

Yes, bullfrogs. You see, when bullfrogs croak, the sound is so huge and their hearing so sensitive that they should deafen themselves. But they don’t. They keep everyone up all night with their infernal racket and still manage to hear quite well in the morning.

The bullfrog’s anatomy is wired so that the nerve impulses from the ears hearing the sound and the nerve impulses from the muscles making the sound always arrive in the frog’s tiny little brain 180 degrees out of phase. The two signals then cancel each other out and the frog does not hear itself, or if the synchronization is slightly off, the frog hears a much quieter version of the croak than the rest of us do.

I think some people are like that. Their brains must be wired so they simply can’t hear themselves the way everyone else does, and so they go on croaking away while everyone else in the conference room wants to heave them out the window.

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