Animal Ears 🐑 How animals hear
Sheep hearing range in hertz
Ovis aries
A wide range into ultrasound and a fine ear for telling who is bleating.
In short
A Sheep hears from about 100 Hz up to 30 kHz, and the pitch it catches best is near 7 kHz. Animal Ears lets you take any sound of yours and hear it exactly as it would.
A sheep hears from 100 to 30,000 Hz, so its ceiling pushes a good way into the ultrasound you can't reach. It's sharpest between 7,000 and 10,000 Hz, higher than you. In a flock that turns out to be useful: every bleat carries a lot of detail in the highs, and that's where the signature lives that tells one animal from another. We hear ‘baa'; they hear who.
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 | 100 Hz |
|---|---|
| Highest it hears | 30 kHz |
| Hears most clearly | 7 kHz |
| What you hear | 20 Hz – 20 kHz |
Your ears vs a Sheep's
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 30 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Audiogram
| Hertz (Hz) | Hearing threshold |
|---|---|
| 100 Hz | 60 dB |
| 250 Hz | 38 dB |
| 500 Hz | 27 dB |
| 1 kHz | 20 dB |
| 2 kHz | 15 dB |
| 4 kHz | 12 dB |
| 7 kHz | 10 dB |
| 10 kHz | 15 dB |
| 16 kHz | 25 dB |
| 30 kHz | 60 dB |
Older, sparser behavioural data (Wollack 1963); limits approximated at 60 dB SPL, best ~7–10 kHz.
Can a Sheep hear things you can't?
A Sheep picks up everything from 100 Hz (the deepest) to 30 kHz (the highest), and hears best around 7 kHz.
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 30 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Frequently asked questions
What sounds can a Sheep hear?
A Sheep picks up everything from 100 Hz (the deepest) to 30 kHz (the highest), and hears best around 7 kHz.
Can a Sheep hear things you can't?
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 30 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
How does Animal Ears make a sound like a Sheep would hear it?
Scientists have measured, pitch by pitch, the quietest volume at which a Sheep 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
- Wollack, C.H. (1963). The auditory acuity of the sheep (Ovis aries). J. Auditory Research, 3, 121–132.
- Fay, R.R. (1988). Hearing in Vertebrates: A Psychophysics Databook. Hill-Fay Associates.
More animals
Cattle
It hears into ultrasound, yet it's hopeless at working out where a noise came from.
Reindeer
Wide, even hearing for a landscape that's enormous, empty and silent.
Pig
Its ceiling is double yours: sows and piglets talk above your limit.
Squirrel
It raises the alarm in ultrasound: a tip-off the predator never hears.
Animal Ears
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