Animal Ears 🐖 How animals hear
Pig hearing range in hertz
Sus scrofa domesticus
Its ceiling is double yours: sows and piglets talk above your limit.
In short
A Pig hears from about 42 Hz up to 40.5 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.
A pig reaches 40,500 Hz, double your ceiling, and peaks near 8,000 Hz. It's a far chattier animal than it looks: it has dozens of distinct grunts, squeals and snorts, and much of the conversation between a mother and her piglets happens at high pitches you only half catch, or miss entirely. Run your sound through its ears and you'll notice the highs are far more present than usual.
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 | 42 Hz |
|---|---|
| Highest it hears | 40.5 kHz |
| Hears most clearly | 8 kHz |
| What you hear | 20 Hz – 20 kHz |
Your ears vs a Pig's
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 40.5 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Audiogram
| Hertz (Hz) | Hearing threshold |
|---|---|
| 42 Hz | 60 dB |
| 63 Hz | 45 dB |
| 125 Hz | 30 dB |
| 250 Hz | 18 dB |
| 500 Hz | 12 dB |
| 1 kHz | 10 dB |
| 2 kHz | 8 dB |
| 4 kHz | 5 dB |
| 8 kHz | 2 dB |
| 16 kHz | 8 dB |
| 32 kHz | 25 dB |
| 40.5 kHz | 60 dB |
Behavioural audiogram; 60 dB SPL criterion, lowest threshold ~8 kHz.
Can a Pig hear things you can't?
A Pig picks up everything from 42 Hz (the deepest) to 40.5 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 40.5 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Frequently asked questions
What sounds can a Pig hear?
A Pig picks up everything from 42 Hz (the deepest) to 40.5 kHz (the highest), and hears best around 8 kHz.
Can a Pig hear things you can't?
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 40.5 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
How does Animal Ears make a sound like a Pig would hear it?
Scientists have measured, pitch by pitch, the quietest volume at which a Pig 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. (1990). Hearing in domestic pigs and goats. Hearing Research, 48(3), 231–240. doi:10.1016/0378-5955(90)90063-U
- Fay, R.R. (1988). Hearing in Vertebrates: A Psychophysics Databook. Hill-Fay Associates.
More animals
Reindeer
Wide, even hearing for a landscape that's enormous, empty and silent.
Cattle
It hears into ultrasound, yet it's hopeless at working out where a noise came from.
Squirrel
It raises the alarm in ultrasound: a tip-off the predator never hears.
Deer
Steerable ears that sweep the forest for the twig that snaps.
Animal Ears
Get Animal Ears
Upload a sound of your own and hear it exactly as an animal would.