And it does FFT in realtime too
(I did an Anatomy degree almost 20years ago now, all from memory)
The FFT is a specific mathematical construction that carries out a Fourier Transform efficiently through a hierarchy of "butterfly" steps. The ear has no such thing. It is just ~20,000 hair cells, each resonant to a specific frequency. That is, each computation is local, very unlike the FFT.
I can roughly recall the mechanism by which it worked, and was told that this was an analog for how the Fourier transformation worked, and I vaguely remember going through one on paper. The spiral of the cochlear seems an analog of how the harmonium works. Does the earlier poster have a point with regard to the cochlear as a physical object performing a Fourier transform (though perhaps not a fast one)?
Folks around here don't handle ambiguity well, and are treating your comment like it's wrong, rather than basically correct except for a harmless conflation of an algorithm for something with the thing itself.
Ah well.
You are right. My apologies for the conflation.
> sinusoidal frequency domain decomposition of sound waves is a key mechanical phenomenon exploited by our hearing system, leading to in effect a frequency domain transformation of the temporal pattern of compressions and rarefactions that we term sound. https://uncommondescent.com/video/hearing-the-cochlea-the-fr...
That one has a video.
Your case is roughly as incoherent as one which claims that a thrown ball does not perform Newtonian physics. It doesn't have to.
Now that we've disposed of the nonsense that cochlear response is not meaningfully modeled with Fourier analysis, interested parties might have fun with research into all the ways this model is not perfect. I've got a paper loaded in my reader claiming it's actually wavelet analysis, for when I have time and inclination to read it.