## 1 Introduction  
Hearing plays a crucial role in our daily lives, yet it is rarely appreciated because the ear works so effortlessly that we barely notice it. Unlike other senses, hearing provides a continuous awareness of our surroundings. From an evolutionary standpoint, the necessity of a functioning hearing organ cannot be overstated. The ability to hear has played a crucial role in human evolution by enhancing our capacity to adapt to and survive in diverse environments. Beyond survival, human social structures have developed to rely deeply on verbal communication, which depends on the precise and rapid processing of sound. Speech, essential for cooperation, learning, and emotional connection, requires the auditory system's fine-tuned ability to process acoustic signals swiftly and accurately. Thus, the evolution of the human ear, especially its capacity for sophisticated sound processing, has been integral to our development as a social and communicative species. The human ear is composed of three main sections: the outer, middle, and inner ear. The outer ear includes the auricle (pinna), which captures sound waves and channels them into the ear canal, where they are amplified. These sound waves then hit the eardrum, causing it to vibrate. In the middle ear, these vibrations are further amplified and transmitted by three tiny bones--the malleus, incus, and stapes--through the oval window (OW) to the inner ear. Amplification in the middle ear primarily results from two mechanisms. The main contribution comes from the size difference between the aera of the eardrum and the stapes footplate connecting to the OW. The eardrum has an area of approximately 55 mm\({}^{2}\), while the stapes footplate's surface area is about 3.2 mm\({}^{2}\). External sound waves in the ear canal exert force on the larger surface area of the eardrum, and then this energy is concentrated over the smaller surface area of the stapes footplate, resulting in much higher pressure here. The second amplification mechanism results from the lever-like action of the ossicle chain. Since the malleus is longer than the incus, it moves a greater distance, but the incus moves with greater force, increasing the pressure transmitted by the stapes faceplate to the OW. Another part of the middle ear is the Eustachian tube, which maintains air pressure balance by connecting the middle ear to the pharyngeal cavity. In the inner ear, vibrations pass through the fluid-filled cochlea, where they stimulate nerve cells that convert the vibrations into electrical signals. These signals are then sent to the brain for sound processing. The inner ear also contains the vestibular system, which plays a vital role in maintaining balance. The round window (RW) is one of the two physiological openings that facilitate sound transmission from the middle ear to the inner ear, with the oval window being the other. The fluid near the RW is enclosed by a thin, flexible, saddle-shaped RW membrane, which acts as a high-compliance barrier within the rigid bony structure of the inner ear. The low-stiffness characteristic of this membrane results in lower sound pressure on the cochlear fluid near the RW compared to the higher-pressure zone near the oval window. During sound stimulation, the stapes at the oval window displaces the incompressible fluid in the cochlea, which induces RW membrane vibrations with an opposite phase to vibrations entering the cochlea. This ensures that the hair cells of the basilar membrane (BM) are stimulated and that audition occurs. Thus, the mechanical properties of the RW membrane are crucial for effective sound transmission across the cochlear partition [1]. The basilar membrane, which separates the scala vestibuli and scala typpani, plays a key role in sound frequency discrimination by vibrating at specific locations depending on the sound's level. The SV and the ST are fluid-filled chambers in the cochlea that transmit pressure waves, which induce basilar membrane motion.