Strange AnimalsHearing Range
Every animal lives in its own band of sound. Elephants talk in rumbles too low for us to hear; bats and dolphins navigate with clicks far above our ceiling. Drag the frequency, play the tone if it falls inside human hearing, and see who else is listening.
Infrasound travels for kilometres
Low frequencies lose little energy over distance. Elephants use rumbles near the bottom of our hearing to keep in touch across several kilometres of savanna, and homing pigeons have been shown in the lab to detect sounds as low as 0.05 Hz, possibly using distant surf and wind as landmarks.
Ultrasound draws sharp pictures
Short wavelengths bounce off small objects, which is why echolocators use them. Bats resolve insects the size of a gnat; bottlenose dolphins hear up to about 150 kHz and can tell objects apart by material. Dogs and cats hear well above us too, which is how a dog whistle works.
A moth hears 300 kHz
The greater wax moth holds the record for the highest frequency hearing of any animal, about 300 kHz, fifteen times our upper limit. The leading idea is an arms race: hearing far beyond any bat's calls gives the moth early warning before it becomes a meal.
Ranges and sources
Approximate limits measured with behavioural audiograms at moderate loudness. Individuals vary, and hearing narrows with age: most adults lose the top few kHz by their forties.
- Heffner, H. E., & Heffner, R. S. (2007). Hearing ranges of laboratory animals. Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science, 46(1), 20-22.
- Heffner, R. S., & Heffner, H. E. (1982). Hearing in the elephant (Elephas maximus). Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 96(6), 926-944.
- Johnson, C. S. (1967). Sound detection thresholds in marine mammals. In Marine Bio-Acoustics, Vol. 2. Pergamon Press.
- Kreithen, M. L., & Quine, D. B. (1979). Infrasound detection by the homing pigeon. Journal of Comparative Physiology, 129, 1-4.
- Moir, H. M., Jackson, J. C., & Windmill, J. F. C. (2013). Extremely high frequency sensitivity in a simple ear. Biology Letters, 9(4), 20130241.
Keep exploring
12 other tools, all built on published wildlife data.