Animal Ears 🐈 How animals hear
Cat hearing range in hertz
Felis catus
It reaches nearly four times higher than you: it hears mice talking on a private channel.
In short
A Cat hears from about 55 Hz up to 79 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.
The cat is a high-pitch champion: it reaches 79,000 Hz, almost four times your limit, one of the widest ranges of any land mammal. Why so much? Hunting. Mice talk to each other in ultrasonic squeaks that no large predator can hear... except this one. Its sweet spot sits at 8,000 Hz, just above your comfort zone: that's why it reacts to the faintest brush behind the sofa and doesn't even blink when you call it.
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 | 55 Hz |
|---|---|
| Highest it hears | 79 kHz |
| Hears most clearly | 8 kHz |
| What you hear | 20 Hz – 20 kHz |
Your ears vs a Cat's
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 79 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Audiogram
| Hertz (Hz) | Hearing threshold |
|---|---|
| 55 Hz | 60 dB |
| 125 Hz | 20 dB |
| 250 Hz | 10 dB |
| 500 Hz | 4 dB |
| 1 kHz | 0 dB |
| 2 kHz | -5 dB |
| 4 kHz | -8 dB |
| 8 kHz | -10 dB |
| 16 kHz | -5 dB |
| 32 kHz | 6 dB |
| 64 kHz | 28 dB |
| 85 kHz | 72 dB |
Behavioural audiogram; ~55 Hz–79 kHz at 60 dB SPL (to 85 kHz at 70 dB), best ~8 kHz. Values digitised from the published curve.
Can a Cat hear things you can't?
A Cat picks up everything from 55 Hz (the deepest) to 79 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 79 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Frequently asked questions
What sounds can a Cat hear?
A Cat picks up everything from 55 Hz (the deepest) to 79 kHz (the highest), and hears best around 8 kHz.
Can a Cat hear things you can't?
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 79 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
How does Animal Ears make a sound like a Cat would hear it?
Scientists have measured, pitch by pitch, the quietest volume at which a Cat 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. (1985). Hearing range of the domestic cat. Hearing Research, 19(1), 85–88. doi:10.1016/0378-5955(85)90100-5
- Fay, R.R. (1988). Hearing in Vertebrates: A Psychophysics Databook. Hill-Fay Associates.
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