Animal Ears 🐬 How animals hear
Dolphin hearing range in hertz
Tursiops truncatus
It reaches seven times higher than you and uses its clicks' echo to ‘see' underwater.
In short
A Dolphin hears from about 75 Hz up to 150 kHz, and the pitch it catches best is near 60 kHz. Animal Ears lets you take any sound of yours and hear it exactly as it would.
A dolphin reaches 150,000 Hz, about seven times your ceiling, and hears best near 60,000 Hz: a zone that simply doesn't exist for you. That's where its clicks live. It fires off extremely rapid clicks and listens to the echo bouncing back, and from that it builds an image of what's in front of it: shape, distance, even whether a fish has something inside. In murky water, where eyesight is useless, it ‘sees' with its ears.
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 | 75 Hz |
|---|---|
| Highest it hears | 150 kHz |
| Hears most clearly | 60 kHz |
| What you hear | 20 Hz – 20 kHz |
Your ears vs a Dolphin's
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 150 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Audiogram
| Hertz (Hz) | Hearing threshold |
|---|---|
| 75 Hz | 135 dB |
| 100 Hz | 128 dB |
| 1 kHz | 98 dB |
| 5 kHz | 70 dB |
| 10 kHz | 57 dB |
| 20 kHz | 52 dB |
| 30 kHz | 48 dB |
| 50 kHz | 44 dB |
| 60 kHz | 43 dB |
| 75 kHz | 45 dB |
| 100 kHz | 56 dB |
| 120 kHz | 75 dB |
| 150 kHz | 120 dB |
UNDERWATER audiogram in dB re 1 µPa — not comparable to in-air dB SPL. EQ uses the curve shape (relative to the dolphin's own best band). Best plateau ~40–80 kHz.
Can a Dolphin hear things you can't?
A Dolphin picks up everything from 75 Hz (the deepest) to 150 kHz (the highest), and hears best around 60 kHz.
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 150 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Frequently asked questions
What sounds can a Dolphin hear?
A Dolphin picks up everything from 75 Hz (the deepest) to 150 kHz (the highest), and hears best around 60 kHz.
Can a Dolphin hear things you can't?
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 150 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
How does Animal Ears make a sound like a Dolphin would hear it?
Scientists have measured, pitch by pitch, the quietest volume at which a Dolphin 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
- Johnson, C.S. (1967). Sound detection thresholds in marine mammals. In: Marine Bio-Acoustics Vol. 2, 247–260. Pergamon.
- Au, W.W.L. (1993). The Sonar of Dolphins. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-4356-4
More animals
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Bat
It hunts in the dark by reading the echo of its own shouts, five times above your ceiling.
Mouse
It lives one floor above you: nearly deaf to your voice, razor-sharp in ultrasound.
Cat
It reaches nearly four times higher than you: it hears mice talking on a private channel.
Animal Ears
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