Animal Ears 🐿️ How animals hear
Squirrel hearing range in hertz
Sciurus niger
It raises the alarm in ultrasound: a tip-off the predator never hears.
In short
A Squirrel hears from about 113 Hz up to 49 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 squirrel reaches 49,000 Hz, more than double your ceiling, and is sharpest near 8,000 Hz: the zone of snaps, rustles and its own chattering alarm calls. What's striking is that part of its warnings are ultrasonic, meaning inaudible to many of the predators chasing it. It's like shouting ‘look out!' on a private channel while whoever is hunting you carries on none the wiser.
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 | 113 Hz |
|---|---|
| Highest it hears | 49 kHz |
| Hears most clearly | 8 kHz |
| What you hear | 20 Hz – 20 kHz |
Your ears vs a Squirrel's
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 49 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Audiogram
| Hertz (Hz) | Hearing threshold |
|---|---|
| 125 Hz | 55 dB |
| 250 Hz | 38 dB |
| 500 Hz | 24 dB |
| 1 kHz | 15 dB |
| 2 kHz | 8 dB |
| 4 kHz | 4 dB |
| 8 kHz | 1 dB |
| 16 kHz | 6 dB |
| 32 kHz | 22 dB |
| 49 kHz | 60 dB |
The fox squirrel is the closest published Sciurus proxy (no gray-squirrel audiogram exists). 60 dB SPL criterion (113 Hz–49 kHz), best ~1 dB at 8 kHz.
Can a Squirrel hear things you can't?
A Squirrel picks up everything from 113 Hz (the deepest) to 49 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 49 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Frequently asked questions
What sounds can a Squirrel hear?
A Squirrel picks up everything from 113 Hz (the deepest) to 49 kHz (the highest), and hears best around 8 kHz.
Can a Squirrel hear things you can't?
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 49 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
How does Animal Ears make a sound like a Squirrel would hear it?
Scientists have measured, pitch by pitch, the quietest volume at which a Squirrel 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
- Jackson, L.L., Heffner, H.E. & Heffner, R.S. (1997). Audiogram of the fox squirrel. J. Comp. Psychol., 111(1), 100–104. doi:10.1037/0735-7036.111.1.100
- Heffner, H.E. & Heffner, R.S. (2007). Hearing ranges of laboratory animals. J. Am. Assoc. Lab. Anim. Sci., 46(1), 20–22.
More animals
Deer
Steerable ears that sweep the forest for the twig that snaps.
Pig
Its ceiling is double yours: sows and piglets talk above your limit.
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.
Animal Ears
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