Animal Ears 🐙 How animals hear
Octopus hearing range in hertz
Octopus vulgaris
No ears at all: it feels the slow push of water with its balance organs.
In short
A Octopus hears from about 1 Hz up to 200 Hz, and the pitch it catches best is near 60 Hz. Animal Ears lets you take any sound of yours and hear it exactly as it would.
An octopus can't hear the way you do, and it isn't a defect: it lacks the air cavity you need to catch a sound's pressure. What it has are balance organs called statocysts — the same ones that tell it which way is up — which feel the slow movement of the water itself, below about 200 Hz. Rather than music, it senses shoves. What you'll hear here is an illustration of that nearly mute world, not a literal sound.
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 | 1 Hz |
|---|---|
| Highest it hears | 200 Hz |
| Hears most clearly | 60 Hz |
| What you hear | 20 Hz – 20 kHz |
Your ears vs a Octopus's
Yes: it picks up rumbles so deep you would, at most, feel them in your chest, down to about 1 Hz. Your floor is 20 Hz. It does miss the highs you can hear, though: above about 0.2 kHz there is nothing left for it.
Audiogram
| Hertz (Hz) | Hearing threshold |
|---|---|
| 1 Hz | 82 dB |
| 3 Hz | 80 dB |
| 10 Hz | 78 dB |
| 20 Hz | 77 dB |
| 50 Hz | 76 dB |
| 70 Hz | 76 dB |
| 100 Hz | 78 dB |
| 150 Hz | 84 dB |
| 200 Hz | 92 dB |
RANGE-DERIVED: cephalopods cannot hear sound pressure (no gas cavity); they detect low-frequency PARTICLE MOTION (~1–200 Hz) via statocysts. Points in dB re 1 µm/s² acceleration — not comparable to pressure audiograms.
Can a Octopus hear things you can't?
A Octopus picks up everything from 1 Hz (the deepest) to 200 Hz (the highest), and hears best around 60 Hz.
Yes: it picks up rumbles so deep you would, at most, feel them in your chest, down to about 1 Hz. Your floor is 20 Hz. It does miss the highs you can hear, though: above about 0.2 kHz there is nothing left for it.
Frequently asked questions
What sounds can a Octopus hear?
A Octopus picks up everything from 1 Hz (the deepest) to 200 Hz (the highest), and hears best around 60 Hz.
Can a Octopus hear things you can't?
Yes: it picks up rumbles so deep you would, at most, feel them in your chest, down to about 1 Hz. Your floor is 20 Hz. It does miss the highs you can hear, though: above about 0.2 kHz there is nothing left for it.
How does Animal Ears make a sound like a Octopus would hear it?
Scientists have measured, pitch by pitch, the quietest volume at which a Octopus 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.
Infrasound
Sounds so deep your ears no longer register them: below about 20 Hz. Rather than hearing them, you'd feel a tremor in your chest, like a heavy lorry going past. Elephants and pigeons do sense them, even from miles away.
Where these numbers come from
- Packard, A., Karlsen, H.E. & Sand, O. (1990). Low frequency hearing in cephalopods. J. Comp. Physiol. A, 166, 501–505. doi:10.1007/BF00192020
- Mooney, T.A. et al. (2010). Sound detection by the longfin squid. J. Exp. Biol., 213, 3748–3759. doi:10.1242/jeb.048348
More animals
Dragonfly
No ears at all: it reads the wind with fine hairs and antennae as it flies.
Mantis shrimp
It roars on the seabed in deep rumbles; how it hears them is still a mystery.
Honeybee
It can't hear at a distance: it feels the air vibrating with its antennae, centimetres away.
Clownfish
Its larvae listen for a reef crackling to find their way home.
Animal Ears
Get Animal Ears
Upload a sound of your own and hear it exactly as an animal would.