
Here’s a photograph of the cupula of a mouse, taken by Dr. Olivia Kalmanson at the University of Colorado. The cupula looks dark green because it’s transparent, so the background can be seen right through it. To make it easier to see, we’ve piled otoconia, the gravity sensor’s crystals, on the middle of it. They are indenting it like a pile of rocks would indent a trampoline. At the bottom of the picture is the crista, the base of attachment of the cupula that contains all the nerves and sensory cells that make the inner ear able to sense spinning.
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