Animals' Extraordinary Hearing Abilities

Since the dawn of time, humans have coexisted alongside other species on Earth, and each of them has a distinct perspective on the color, speed, and sound of reality. Thanks to technology, we can now roughly comprehend what animals hear in our world. Since dogs are considered man's greatest friend, how about we attempt living in their ears for a little while? Dogs are known to perceive time very differently from humans; the best estimate is that one human year is equivalent to seven canine years. However, when you call their names, what do they actually hear? Dogs perceive time and sound differently than people do. Let's say you're calling Skipper to go for a walk. You're talking to him normally, like you do every day, but it sounds like you're speaking slowly to him. It's as if you've just hit the 0.75 speed on your Spotify app. You've also probably heard that dogs can hear sounds far away from humans, which is true the average human hearing range is between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. We also tend to hear less as we age. It's true this is scientific that our dogs have a hearing range of up to 45 KHz, which is significantly greater than ours. Given that certain dog breeds are recognized for their hunting prowess, they would require enhanced hearing devices. The problem is that dogs aren't as excellent at differentiating sounds as people are. People can tell the difference between slow and go rather readily, but dogs don't. This phenomenon is known as frequency selectivity. This can be explained scientifically by the fact that different regions of the CCKA respond to different frequencies. This is the inside of a human ear, and this is the inside of a dog's ear. The ca is this area right here that resembles a snail's shell, it is composed of a fluid that resembles saltwater, and at the innermost center of the CA are tiny hairs that vibrate in response to the frequency of sound we are receiving. Some hairs will only vibrate in response to high-pitched sounds, while other hairs will vibrate in response to lower notes. Since dogs likewise lose their hearing with age, dogs truly are man's greatest friend. Human hearing is best when we're young; according to a University of New South Wales study, a youngster can hear up to 24 KZ. When we are young, our ability to hear very high-pitched noises increases, but as we age, this tends to diminish. An older person's maximal hearing capacity may be as low as 8 Kilz. I mean, it's unlikely that this guy can hear the birds singing or even the microwave beeping in both people and dogs. In the CIA, the loss of microscopic hairs is linked to hearing loss. What about cats? The interesting thing is that while dogs perceive reality in slower motion than humans do, cats actually experience life about 9% faster than we do. You've probably heard that sound can also be classified as either infrasound or ultrasound. Here's what we'll do: I'll give you an example of a sound, and you'll tell me if you think it's infrasound or ultrasound. The correct answer is infrasound. This one is tricky. Cats can hear higher frequencies than dogs; their hearing can go a little beyond 60 khz. This is especially important because cats hunt small rodents that make almost imperceptible noises to human ears. the movement of ants in an underground tunnel also infra sound infra sounds are low range frequencies anything ranging below 20 ht z which means we can't hear them but an elephant can when you look at elephants one of the first things you'll notice is their enormous ears well everything is pretty gigantic but but the ears are impressive especially in comparison to ours their ears allow them to pick up on sound waves that are much longer than the ones we pick up on this means they can pick up on the movement of clouds and can physically hear when rain clouds are gathering this is helpful to them because they will know when it's time to head down to water reservoirs for example elephants also use infra sound to communicate with each other they do that by pounding their feet on the ground this sets up a powerful but hardly audible vibration and since elephants are so awesome they can pick up the vibration through nerve endings in their feet and ear bones it works kind of like a bush telephone speaking of vibration how do you think a snake can be enchanted by a flute if it doesn't have any ears well the snake is not following the music it's following the man's imperceptible foot tapping on the ground you see for humans sound waves are usually carried by the air but snakes who move around through the ground are connected to the environment by vibration snakes don't have ear drums so their inner ear is connected to their jaw plus the vibrations move from bone to bone inside a snake this is called osteop which literally means that snakes listen with their bones if this worked for humans sound waves could literally send chills down someone's spine huh okay so humans listen through the air elephants and snakes can hear through the ground how does hearing work for water animals you could think that the water element impairs hearing but not for dolphins dolphins emit extremely high frequency sound waves that are classified as ultrasound they emit clicking sounds to scan the water for food and other animals whichever way sound bounces back to them will help them identify what's in the water ahead and around them to put it simply Dolphins see with their ears this ability is called echolocation and it's a form of navigation through sound well you've heard of sonars right it's an instrument ships use to search for things underwater a sonar emits very fast sound pulses that bounce off the seafloor and back this way they can detect the depth of the water they can find shipwrecks and even discover geological formations that's pretty much what dolphins do to locate themselves oh and if National Geographic is Right humans can hear frequencies up to 100 khz when we are diving underwater this means we can hear almost the same way as Dolphins can you imagine using echolocation to Wade through the water Although experts are unsure of the precise cause, they offer two theories. It might have something to do with how sound travels differently through the water it can also have to do with the way our ears receive sound underwater and how our brain interprets it now it's not only dolphins that can use sound to navigate through life bats can also do that since bats tend to live in dark or even pitch black environments they can't really count on their Vision but they have such precious hearing equipment that they might not even need to watch where they are going even though a bat's brain is Tiny it can thoroughly map the entire environment it is in and easily locate prey what about rodents if you've ever seen a mouse or a chipmunk bouncing around you've probably thought they looked a bit accelerated here's a fun fact compared to humans a chipmunk experiences reality at half the speed as we do so what looks super fast and clumsy to us is seemingly pretty chill from that rodent's point of view in terms of hearing a mouse's hearing can go as high as 91 kHz which is very very high quite fascinating huh that's it for today so hey if you pacified your curiosity then give the video a like and share it with your friends or if you want more just click on these videos and stay on the bright side