Animal Ears 🕷️ How animals hear
Jumping spider hearing range in hertz
Phidippus audax
No ears, yet it hears a wasp across the room... with its legs.
In short
A Jumping spider hears from about 80 Hz up to 2 kHz, and the pitch it catches best is near 100 Hz. Animal Ears lets you take any sound of yours and hear it exactly as it would.
For years it was taken for granted that jumping spiders only felt vibrations on contact. Then they were found freezing at a sound arriving through the air, from several metres away. They hear with extremely fine hairs on their legs, which move with the air. Their best zone is 100 Hz... which happens to be exactly the wingbeat buzz of the wasps that parasitise them.
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 | 80 Hz |
|---|---|
| Highest it hears | 2 kHz |
| Hears most clearly | 100 Hz |
| What you hear | 20 Hz – 20 kHz |
Your ears vs a Jumping spider's
It does miss the highs you can hear, though: above about 2 kHz there is nothing left for it.
Audiogram
| Hertz (Hz) | Hearing threshold |
|---|---|
| 80 Hz | 65 dB |
| 100 Hz | 63 dB |
| 130 Hz | 65 dB |
| 200 Hz | 70 dB |
| 300 Hz | 76 dB |
| 380 Hz | 80 dB |
| 500 Hz | 86 dB |
| 1 kHz | 92 dB |
| 2 kHz | 98 dB |
Detects far-field airborne sound via air-movement-sensitive leg hairs, strongest at low frequencies ~80–380 Hz (startle to ~80 Hz), likely matching predatory-wasp wingbeats. Detection-band-derived; high-frequency thresholds are extrapolated.
Can a Jumping spider hear things you can't?
A Jumping spider picks up everything from 80 Hz (the deepest) to 2 kHz (the highest), and hears best around 100 Hz.
It does miss the highs you can hear, though: above about 2 kHz there is nothing left for it.
Frequently asked questions
What sounds can a Jumping spider hear?
A Jumping spider picks up everything from 80 Hz (the deepest) to 2 kHz (the highest), and hears best around 100 Hz.
Can a Jumping spider hear things you can't?
It does miss the highs you can hear, though: above about 2 kHz there is nothing left for it.
How does Animal Ears make a sound like a Jumping spider would hear it?
Scientists have measured, pitch by pitch, the quietest volume at which a Jumping spider 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.
Where these numbers come from
- Shamble, P.S. et al. (2016). Airborne acoustic perception by a jumping spider. Current Biology, 26, 2913–2920. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.08.041
- Vahaba, D.M. (2017). Listen up — jumping spiders can hear airborne sounds. J. Exp. Biol., 220(3), 331. doi:10.1242/jeb.155234
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Animal Ears
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