Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:The inner ear is a marvel of evolution, but scientists are still puzzled over certain aspects of its operation. Two related studies detail how scientists successfully excised a sliver of an inner ear belonging to a gerbil and studied its auditory-inducing processes. The hope is that understanding these processes could lead to better therapies for sensorineural hearing loss caused by damage to the hair cells in the inner ear. Due the pint-sized nature of this particular feat of biological engineering—the inner ear is home to the smallest bones and the smallest muscles in our bodies—and the fact that it’s protected by the densest bone in the human body (the petrous part of the temporal bone), observing the inner ear in action is immensely difficult. The hope is that analyzing the minuscule hearing process outside of the body will give scientists unprecedented understanding of how these mechanisms work, including how to develop therapies that impact sensorineural hearing loss.