Which Animal Could Hear Sounds Below 20 Hz

Meet the creatures with the most powerful, sensitive, and sophisticated ears in the animal kingdom.

Every fauna has a specific range of frequencies it tin can hear and is most sensitive to sounds in particular parts of its range. A couple of measures nosotros'll be looking at for comparison here are Hertz (Hz) and decibels (dB). Nosotros use Hz for measuring pitch and dB (a logarithmic measure) for loudness.

But before getting to the world'due south best listeners, it might be helpful to start consider…

The Homo Baseline

Humans accept a decent pitch range, from nigh xx Hz to xx,000 Hz. We call frequencies below the range of human hearing infrasonic, and frequencies above our range are ultrasonic.

Prolonged exposure to infrasound at high volumes can make us sick, rupture our organs, and even kill us, despite being completely silent to our ears.

As for volume, the lower limit of audibility for humans (i.east., the quietest sound we can hear) is 0 dB.

The Animal Champions

Lots of animals can hear infrasonic and ultrasonic sounds beyond our capabilities. This includes almost of our pets. Cats, dogs, rabbits, and guinea pigs can all hear wider pitch ranges than united states of america.

Chart of frequencies that various animals can hear — Logarithmic chart of the hearing ranges of some animals, via Wikipedia. Humans are the purple bar.

Merely which animals accept the best hearing? Beneath, nosotros'll look at a few different categories of best.

Highest frequency: The greater wax moth has the best ultrasonic hearing in the world past far, going upwardly to at least 300,000 Hz. It too hears the widest range of frequencies, and its hearing is highly precise (e.thousand., it can distinguish betwixt bat calls and equally loftier-frequency mating calls from other greater wax moths).

If yous're wondering why a moth needs such astonishing hearing, the answer is at to the lowest degree in office that these moths are oft eaten by bats that produce incredibly high-pitched calls. So the evolutionary arms race has kept this moth'due south hearing several steps ahead. There'south no sound any bat can make that they can't hear.

Everyman frequency: Pigeons' ability to hear extremely low-frequency infrasounds (as depression equally only 0.05 Hz) is second to none. They can use this superpower to detect distant storms, simply at such depression frequencies, they can even discover upcoming earthquakes and volcanos.

Elephants are another animal commonly associated with low-frequency hearing, but with a lower spring of effectually fourteen Hz (some reports put it every bit depression as 5 Hz), they don't come up close to pigeons. Nonetheless, elephants nevertheless stand out for their low-frequency seismic communication that allows them to exchange information at long distances. Enquiry has shown elephants are able to recognize unique calls of other individuals upward to 1.v km (or 0.nine mi.) away. They use their huge vocal cords to create infrasonic sounds humans are unable to hear, and other elephants pick up these sounds using both their large ears and feet. They can fifty-fifty use the difference between how long it takes a sound to reach them through the ground and the air to determine the approximate distance it'south coming from.

And while we've veered off course into long-distance communication (divide from specialized hearing), I'd be remiss to not mention the world's experts at information technology: whales. Baleen whales (including the blueish whale) and sperm whales are standouts. Simply how good are they? The longest-distance whale calls can be heard and recognized thousands of miles away. They pull this off through the combination of:

Low-frequency infrasonics (lower frequencies travel farther with less scattering and distortion).
Crazy-loud book (the loudest vocalizations of whatsoever creatures, with sperm whales beingness recorded at 230 dB, comparable to a Saturn 5 rocket launch—so you probably don't want to spend a lot of fourth dimension swimming with sperm whales).
The fact that sound travels much further and faster through h2o than air.
Baleens' mastery of using the ocean's "deep sound channel."

Maned wolf with tall ears — Check out the ears on this maned wolf

Most astute hearing: Wolves, cats, and some breeds of dogs are among the animals with the most sensitive hearing, enabling them to option up depression volume sounds at long distances. All of them are among animals that can rotate their ears to better capture sound, and all of them have been known to detect sounds as quiet as a ridiculous -15 dB (in the frequency ranges they're almost sensitive to). For comparison, nearly anechoic chambers (rooms designed to completely absorb audio reflections) tin't reach that low of a volume. A few bat species are also known for their highly sensitive hearing that enables them to detect the footsteps of insects walking nearby.

Special Mentions

Largest ears: This honor goes to African elephants. Like other animals with big ears (including the long-eared jerboa, which has the largest ears relative to its trunk size), elephants utilise blood flowing through their large, thin ears to assist dissipate heat. Compared to sweating, this is an especially useful adaptation/tactic in desert environments where conserving water is important.

Seeing past hearing: A number of incredible animals use echolocation to essentially run into or map the world around them—even around corners—using the reflected echoes from sounds they make. Bats, dolphins, toothed whales, and in simpler forms, fifty-fifty a few birds, shrews, and humans can all practise this (a handful of blind people are well known for developing their echolocation power, among them Daniel Kish). However, although hearing plays a role in echolocation, it is a rather different sense.