Animal Ears 🐛 How animals hear
Moth hearing range in hertz
Agrotis segetum
Ears with a single mission: spot the bat before it's too late.
In short
A Moth hears from about 3 kHz up to 100 kHz, and the pitch it catches best is near 30 kHz. Animal Ears lets you take any sound of yours and hear it exactly as it would.
The noctuid moth has extremely simple ears, barely a couple of nerve cells, but exquisitely tuned: deaf to low pitches and sensitive up to 100,000 Hz, five times your ceiling. Why exactly there? Because that's where the bats hunting it are shouting. Its ear is basically an enemy-radar detector: if the echo sounds far off, it veers away; if it sounds close, it folds its wings and drops like a stone.
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 | 3 kHz |
|---|---|
| Highest it hears | 100 kHz |
| Hears most clearly | 30 kHz |
| What you hear | 20 Hz – 20 kHz |
Your ears vs a Moth's
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 100 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Audiogram
| Hertz (Hz) | Hearing threshold |
|---|---|
| 3 kHz | 75 dB |
| 5 kHz | 68 dB |
| 10 kHz | 55 dB |
| 15 kHz | 48 dB |
| 20 kHz | 43 dB |
| 30 kHz | 40 dB |
| 40 kHz | 45 dB |
| 50 kHz | 52 dB |
| 60 kHz | 58 dB |
| 80 kHz | 68 dB |
| 100 kHz | 78 dB |
True far-field pressure hearing via a paired tympanal ear, broadly tuned to bat echolocation ultrasound, best ~20–40 kHz. Representative V-shaped noctuid audiogram; approximate absolute dB SPL.
Can a Moth hear things you can't?
A Moth picks up everything from 3 kHz (the deepest) to 100 kHz (the highest), and hears best around 30 kHz.
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 100 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Frequently asked questions
What sounds can a Moth hear?
A Moth picks up everything from 3 kHz (the deepest) to 100 kHz (the highest), and hears best around 30 kHz.
Can a Moth hear things you can't?
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 100 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
How does Animal Ears make a sound like a Moth would hear it?
Scientists have measured, pitch by pitch, the quietest volume at which a Moth 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
- Roeder, K.D. & Treat, A.E. (1957). Ultrasonic reception by the tympanic organ of noctuid moths. J. Exp. Zoology, 134, 127–158. doi:10.1002/jez.1401340107
- Nakano, R., Takanashi, T. & Surlykke, A. (2015). Moth hearing and sound communication. J. Comp. Physiol. A, 201, 111–121. doi:10.1007/s00359-014-0945-8
More animals
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.
Dolphin
It reaches seven times higher than you and uses its clicks' echo to ‘see' underwater.
Butterfly
It hears through an ear at the base of the wing, tuned to birdsong.
Animal Ears
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