In the engineered silence of an anechoic chamber, researchers have uncovered what anatomy alone could not explain: tobacco hornworm caterpillars, creatures without ears or tympanic membranes, detect the approach of predators through an array of microscopically specialized body hairs sensitive to the movement of air itself. The discovery, years in the making, reveals that hearing is not confined to the organs we recognize as ears, but may be distributed across a body as a kind of living antenna. In learning how the caterpillar listens, engineers now glimpse a path toward microphones that do not