The Grab-oids from Tremors are a fictional version of what you are looking for.

A deaf person can feel music vibrations. They’re probably in touch with the actual foundation of the medium than anyone who can hear it as modified from its original form.

But would feeling vibrations also be converting sound -> mechanical -> electrical? Just with the nerves elsewhere than the ear.

I am just speaking off the cuff, I’ve never considered this before. I’m thinking our brains can’t perceive it if it doesn’t get converted.

Also, the question makes me think of lateral lines in fish. They have a sixth sense, beyond hearing, sight, touch, smell, and taste.

Anyway, I don’t have the answer, but it is a really interesting question and I’m throwing out ideas for consideration.

The term I use to describe converting vibration into brain signal is “transduce”. It’s not much dicferent a concept from “translate”, like from smoke signal to color code to English to PigLatin. The only difference between translate and transduce, is that one requires code, the other only requires medium.

Thanks for the link @jaytkay. Interesting read.

How could sound be perceived unless it is somehow converted into something else in the organism? Sound is just an energy wave traveling in matter. The perception has to start with something in the organism vibrating in response to the sound. That is conversion to mechanical energy. I would think that in most, perhaps all, organisms that hear the sound, the mechanical energy is converted to an electrical signal.

No. Basically for the sound waves to be processed by the brain the energy has to be converted in to nerve impulses. Doesn’t matter if that happens in your ears or in your in feet, for the brain to be aware of it it has to happen.

With what @LostInParadise & @Lightlyseared are saying… I remember that phrase about the tree falling & no one around to hear it…would the answer to that be no? The tree falling will create the sound energy, but since sound energy needs to be converted in some way for it to be heard (as far as we know) & with nothing around to convert this energy, no noise was heard, right? Or is it more complicated than that? I assume it is.

This gets us into a philosophical discussion of what we mean by noise. Certainly the energy wave was created and caused vibration in the air, rocks and other trees. Of course none of these perceived it as noise.

Organisms have to have receptors to “hear” and sound waves may have to change form to be perceived as sound. There may be organisms which respond to sound waves, react to the physical waves, but which do not have the receptor cells to actually hear the sound.
I had a hard time with the tree falling in the forest question because, to me, a sound exists because of scientifically determined factors, no question. Whether anyone hears or appreciates it is another matter entirely.

@Sunny2 I think the best answer to the tree falling question was given by Neil deGrasse Tyson… “How do you know it fell?” :)