Animal Ears 🐂 How animals hear
Cattle hearing range in hertz
Bos taurus
It hears into ultrasound, yet it's hopeless at working out where a noise came from.
In short
A Cattle hears from about 23 Hz up to 35 kHz, and the pitch it catches best is near 8 kHz. Animal Ears lets you take any sound of yours and hear it exactly as it would.
Cattle hear from very deep rumbles (23 Hz, near the floor of what's audible) up to 35,000 Hz, well inside the ultrasound you can't reach, and their finest zone is 8,000 Hz. But they have a curious weak spot: locating. Where you can point to a sound's source and be off by a couple of degrees, a cow is off by more than twenty. So when it hears something odd it lifts its head and searches with its eyes: its ears say ‘something's there', not ‘it's over there'.
Hertz (Hz)
Which pitches it hears
Hertz count how many times per second a sound vibrates. Few vibrations = low (the rumble of thunder, about 30 Hz). Many vibrations = high (a microwave beeping, about 3,000 Hz). And ‘1 kHz' is just shorthand for 1,000 Hz. You hear, roughly, from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz.
A low sound rumbles (think thunder); a high sound squeals (think a mosquito). These three numbers mark how far down this animal goes, how far up it goes, and which pitch it hears most clearly of all.
| Lowest it hears | 23 Hz |
|---|---|
| Highest it hears | 35 kHz |
| Hears most clearly | 8 kHz |
| What you hear | 20 Hz – 20 kHz |
Your ears vs a Cattle's
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 35 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Audiogram
| Hertz (Hz) | Hearing threshold |
|---|---|
| 23 Hz | 60 dB |
| 63 Hz | 40 dB |
| 125 Hz | 27 dB |
| 250 Hz | 17 dB |
| 500 Hz | 10 dB |
| 1 kHz | 12 dB |
| 2 kHz | 5 dB |
| 4 kHz | 0 dB |
| 8 kHz | -11 dB |
| 16 kHz | 2 dB |
| 25 kHz | 22 dB |
| 35 kHz | 60 dB |
Behavioural audiogram; 60 dB SPL criterion, best sensitivity at ~8 kHz (lowest threshold ~-21 dB in the study). Points digitised from the published curve.
Can a Cattle hear things you can't?
A Cattle picks up everything from 23 Hz (the deepest) to 35 kHz (the highest), and hears best around 8 kHz.
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 35 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Frequently asked questions
What sounds can a Cattle hear?
A Cattle picks up everything from 23 Hz (the deepest) to 35 kHz (the highest), and hears best around 8 kHz.
Can a Cattle hear things you can't?
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 35 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
How does Animal Ears make a sound like a Cattle would hear it?
Scientists have measured, pitch by pitch, the quietest volume at which a Cattle starts to hear each sound. We take that curve and apply it to your recording like a giant equaliser: we turn up the pitches the animal hears beautifully and turn down or remove the ones that simply don't exist for it. The result gets close to what it would notice... but it still arrives through your ears.
Hertz (Hz)
Hertz count how many times per second a sound vibrates. Few vibrations = low (the rumble of thunder, about 30 Hz). Many vibrations = high (a microwave beeping, about 3,000 Hz). And ‘1 kHz' is just shorthand for 1,000 Hz. You hear, roughly, from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz.
Ultrasound
Sounds so high your ears no longer register them: above about 20,000 Hz. To you they are total silence, but a dog, a cat or a bat hears them perfectly. That's exactly where a ‘silent' dog whistle lives.
Where these numbers come from
- Heffner, R.S. & Heffner, H.E. (1983). Hearing in large mammals: horses and cattle. Behavioral Neuroscience, 97(2), 299–309. doi:10.1037/0735-7044.97.2.299
- Fay, R.R. (1988). Hearing in Vertebrates: A Psychophysics Databook. Hill-Fay Associates.
More animals
Reindeer
Wide, even hearing for a landscape that's enormous, empty and silent.
Pig
Its ceiling is double yours: sows and piglets talk above your limit.
Sheep
A wide range into ultrasound and a fine ear for telling who is bleating.
Squirrel
It raises the alarm in ultrasound: a tip-off the predator never hears.
Animal Ears
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