Animal Ears 🦌 How animals hear
Reindeer hearing range in hertz
Rangifer tarandus
Wide, even hearing for a landscape that's enormous, empty and silent.
In short
A Reindeer hears from about 70 Hz up to 38 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 reindeer hears from 70 to 38,000 Hz, nearly double your ceiling, and stays evenly sensitive between 1,000 and 16,000 Hz, with its best zone at 8,000. On the tundra, an open landscape with very little background noise, that breadth is worth gold: snow crunching, the herd's hooves or a wolf's footfall carry over distances that would be unthinkable in a forest.
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 | 70 Hz |
|---|---|
| Highest it hears | 38 kHz |
| Hears most clearly | 8 kHz |
| What you hear | 20 Hz – 20 kHz |
Your ears vs a Reindeer's
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 38 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Audiogram
| Hertz (Hz) | Hearing threshold |
|---|---|
| 70 Hz | 60 dB |
| 125 Hz | 44 dB |
| 250 Hz | 32 dB |
| 500 Hz | 20 dB |
| 1 kHz | 11 dB |
| 2 kHz | 8 dB |
| 4 kHz | 5 dB |
| 8 kHz | 3 dB |
| 16 kHz | 10 dB |
| 32 kHz | 34 dB |
| 38 kHz | 60 dB |
Digitised from Flydal et al. (2001); 60 dB SPL criterion (70 Hz–38 kHz), broad flat optimum 1–16 kHz, best ~3 dB at 8 kHz.
Can a Reindeer hear things you can't?
A Reindeer picks up everything from 70 Hz (the deepest) to 38 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 38 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Frequently asked questions
What sounds can a Reindeer hear?
A Reindeer picks up everything from 70 Hz (the deepest) to 38 kHz (the highest), and hears best around 8 kHz.
Can a Reindeer hear things you can't?
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 38 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
How does Animal Ears make a sound like a Reindeer would hear it?
Scientists have measured, pitch by pitch, the quietest volume at which a Reindeer 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
- Flydal, K. et al. (2001). Hearing in reindeer (Rangifer tarandus). J. Comp. Physiol. A, 187(4), 265–269. doi:10.1007/s003590100198
- Fay, R.R. (1988). Hearing in Vertebrates: A Psychophysics Databook. Hill-Fay Associates.
More animals
Pig
Its ceiling is double yours: sows and piglets talk above your limit.
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
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