Animal Ears 🐅 How animals hear
Tiger hearing range in hertz
Panthera tigris
A house cat's ears scaled up, plus a roar you feel before you hear it.
In short
A Tiger hears from about 55 Hz up to 79 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.
The tiger shares its hearing with its cousin the house cat: 55 to 79,000 Hz, four times your ceiling, with its best zone at 8,000 Hz. Its curve is estimated from the domestic cat, because measuring a tiger's hearing is, let's say, complicated. And then there's its other half: the roar, which drags along infrasound components so deep they're felt in the chest more than heard, and which cut through dense vegetation without fading.
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 | 55 Hz |
|---|---|
| Highest it hears | 79 kHz |
| Hears most clearly | 8 kHz |
| What you hear | 20 Hz – 20 kHz |
Your ears vs a Tiger's
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 79 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Audiogram
| Hertz (Hz) | Hearing threshold |
|---|---|
| 63 Hz | 55 dB |
| 125 Hz | 40 dB |
| 250 Hz | 25 dB |
| 500 Hz | 15 dB |
| 1 kHz | 8 dB |
| 2 kHz | 2 dB |
| 4 kHz | -3 dB |
| 8 kHz | -5 dB |
| 16 kHz | 0 dB |
| 32 kHz | 8 dB |
| 64 kHz | 35 dB |
| 79 kHz | 60 dB |
PROXY: no complete tiger audiogram exists, so this uses the domestic cat curve. Real tigers likely have better low-frequency/infrasound sensitivity and a lower high-frequency ceiling; treat highs above ~40 kHz as overestimated.
Can a Tiger hear things you can't?
A Tiger picks up everything from 55 Hz (the deepest) to 79 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 79 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
Frequently asked questions
What sounds can a Tiger hear?
A Tiger picks up everything from 55 Hz (the deepest) to 79 kHz (the highest), and hears best around 8 kHz.
Can a Tiger hear things you can't?
Yes: it picks up pitches so high they are pure silence to you, up to about 79 kHz. Your ceiling is 20 kHz.
How does Animal Ears make a sound like a Tiger would hear it?
Scientists have measured, pitch by pitch, the quietest volume at which a Tiger 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. (1985). Hearing range of the domestic cat. Hearing Research, 19(1), 85–88. doi:10.1016/0378-5955(85)90100-5
- Walsh, E.J. et al. (2003). Acoustic communication in Panthera tigris. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 113(4 Suppl.), 2275. doi:10.1121/1.4780531
More animals
Cat
It reaches nearly four times higher than you: it hears mice talking on a private channel.
Deer
Steerable ears that sweep the forest for the twig that snaps.
Squirrel
It raises the alarm in ultrasound: a tip-off the predator never hears.
Pig
Its ceiling is double yours: sows and piglets talk above your limit.
Animal Ears
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