The Amazing Ways Animals Hear Our World

Bright Side

Animals like cats, dogs, elephants, and humans have ears that stick out to help funnel sound vibrations into their inner ears! Dolphins, on the other hand, don’t have outer ears but have some of the sharpest hearing around. Scientists think dolphins use a part of their jawbone to send vibrations to their inner ears. Inside the inner ear, these vibrations travel to the cochlea, which is full of tiny hair cells that help detect different sound frequencies. The longer an animal's cochlea, the more types of hair cells it has, giving it a wider range of hearing abilities. Pretty cool, right?  Credit: The ear: Sunshineconnelly at en.wikibooks, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anatomy_and_physiology_of_animals_The_ear.jpg Animation is created by Bright Side.  #brightside   ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Listen to Bright Side on:  Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/idhttps-podcasts-apple-com-podcast-bright-side/id1554898078 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/brightside/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official/ Tik Tok - https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en Snapchat - https://www.snapchat.com/p/c6a1e38a-bff1-4a40-9731-2c8234ccb19f/1866144599336960  Stock materials (photos, footages and other):  https://www.depositphotos.com  https://www.shutterstock.com  https://www.eastnews.ru  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me

Transcript

00:00Since the beginning of time, humans have shared the world with other species.

00:05Each one has a unique perception of what reality is like in terms of color, speed, and sound.

00:12Today, thanks to technology, we can more or less understand how our world sounds to animals.

00:18So how about we try living with their ears for a bit?

00:22Let's start with man's best friend, dogs.

00:26It is known that dogs experience time quite differently than our own.

00:30The best guess is that one human year equals seven dog years.

00:35But when you call out their names, what exactly do they hear?

00:40Dogs experience our world slower than humans.

00:43That works both for their perception of time, but also for sound.

00:47Let's say you're calling Skipper to go for a walk.

00:50You're speaking at a normal pace like you do every day.

00:53But to Skipper, he's hearing you in slow motion, as if you just pressed the 0.75 speed on your Spotify app.

01:02You've also probably heard that dogs have a wider hearing range than humans,

01:07and that they can hear sounds from a very great distance.

01:10And this is true.

01:12An average human being has a hearing range from 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz.

01:18We hear better when we are younger, and tend to hear less when we get older.

01:23Yep, this is actually scientific.

01:26But our dogs can hear up to 45 kilohertz, which is considerably more than us.

01:31Some dog breeds are known to be good hunters, and for that reason, they would need better hearing equipment.

01:37The thing is, dogs aren't as good as humans at distinguishing sounds.

01:42Humans easily know the difference between slow and go,

01:46while dogs, not so much.

01:49This is called frequency selectivity.

01:52The scientific explanation for this is that different parts of the cochlea answer to different frequencies.

01:58This is what a human ear looks like on the inside, and this is what a dog's ear looks like.

02:04The cochlea is this part right here that looks like the shell of a snail.

02:09It's made up of saltwater-like fluid.

02:12In the innermost center of this cochlea, there are tiny hairs that vibrate according to the frequency of sound we are receiving.

02:19Some hairs will only be activated by high-pitched sounds, while other hairs will be activated with lower notes.

02:27Dogs really prove to be humans' besties, as they also tend to lose their hearing with old age.

02:34You see, human hearing is at its prime when we're young.

02:38A study from the University of New South Wales says that a child can hear up to 24 kHz.

02:45When we're young, we can hear extremely high-pitched sounds, but this tends to decrease once we get older.

02:51The maximum hearing capacity of an older person can go as low as 8 kHz.

02:56I mean, this person probably can't hear the birds chirping, or even the beeping of their microwave.

03:03Both in dogs and humans, the loss of hearing has to do with the loss of the tiny hairs in the cochlea.

03:10And what about cats?

03:12Cats can hear higher frequencies than dogs.

03:15Their hearing can go a little beyond 60 kHz.

03:19This is especially important since they hunt small rodents that make almost imperceptible noises to our human ears.

03:26But with a cat's hearing device, it can pick up on a mouse hiding in a bush over 100 feet away.

03:32The funny thing is that while dogs experience reality in slower motion than humans do,

03:38cats actually experience life about 9% faster than we do.

03:43You've probably heard that sound can also be classified as either infrasound or ultrasound.

03:49Here's what we'll do.

03:51I'll give you an example of a sound, and you'll tell me if you think it's infrasound or ultrasound.

03:57Would you say the sound of tectonic plates moving around is infra or ultrasound?

04:02The correct answer is infrasound.

04:05This one is tricky.

04:07The movement of ants in an underground tunnel.

04:09Also, infrasound.

04:11Infrasounds are low-range frequencies, anything ranging below 20 Hz, which means we can't hear them.

04:18But an elephant can.

04:20When you look at elephants, one of the first things you'll notice is their enormous ears.

04:26Well, everything is pretty gigantic.

04:29But the ears are impressive, especially in comparison to ours.

04:34Their ears allow them to pick up on sound waves that are much longer than the ones we pick up on.

04:40This means they can pick up on the movement of clouds and can physically hear when rain clouds are gathering.

04:47This is helpful to them because they will know when it's time to head down to water reservoirs, for example.

04:53Elephants also use infrasound to communicate with each other.

04:57They do that by pounding their feet on the ground.

05:00This sets up a powerful but hardly audible vibration.

05:04And since elephants are so awesome, they can pick up the vibration through nerve endings in their feet and ear bones.

05:11It works kind of like a bush telephone.

05:13Speaking of vibration, how do you think a snake can be enchanted by a flute if it doesn't have any ears?

05:20Well, the snake is not following the music.

05:23It's following the man's imperceptible foot tapping on the ground.

05:27You see, for humans, sound waves are usually carried by the air.

05:32But snakes, who move around through the ground, are connected to the environment by vibration.

05:39Snakes don't have eardrums, so their inner ear is connected to their jaw.

05:44Plus, the vibrations move from bone to bone inside a snake.

05:48This is called osteophony, which literally means that snakes listen with their bones.

05:54If this worked for humans, sound waves could literally send chills down someone's spine, huh?

06:01Okay, so humans listen through the air.

06:04Elephants and snakes can hear through the ground.

06:07How does hearing work for water animals?

06:10You could think that the water element impairs hearing, but not for dolphins.

06:15Dolphins emit extremely high-frequency sound waves that are classified as ultrasound.

06:21They emit clicking sounds to scan the water for food and other animals.

06:25Whichever way sound bounces back to them will help them identify what's in the water ahead and around them.

06:32To put it simply, dolphins see with their ears.

06:36This ability is called echolocation, and it's a form of navigation through sound.

06:44Well, you've heard of sonars, right?

06:47It's an instrument ships use to search for things underwater.

06:51A sonar emits very fast sound pulses that bounce off the seafloor and back.

06:56This way, they can detect the depth of the water, they can find shipwrecks, and even discover geological formations.

07:04That's pretty much what dolphins do to locate themselves.

07:08Oh, and if National Geographic is right, humans can hear frequencies up to 100 kilohertz when we are diving underwater.

07:16This means we can hear almost the same way as dolphins.

07:19Can you imagine using echolocation to wade through the water?

07:24Scientists don't exactly know why this happens, but they have two guesses.

07:29It might have something to do with how sound travels differently through the water.

07:33It can also have to do with the way our ears receive sound underwater and how our brain interprets it.

07:40Now, it's not only dolphins that can use sound to navigate through life.

07:44Bats can also do that.

07:46Since bats tend to live in dark or even pitch black environments, they can't really count on their vision.

07:53But they have such precious hearing equipment that they might not even need to watch where they are going.

07:59Even though a bat's brain is tiny, it can thoroughly map the entire environment it is in and easily locate prey.

08:07What about rodents?

08:09If you've ever seen a mouse or a chipmunk bouncing around, you've probably thought they looked a bit accelerated.

08:15Here's a fun fact.

08:16Compared to humans, a chipmunk experiences reality at half the speed as we do.

08:21So what looks super fast and clumsy to us is seemingly pretty chill from that rodent's point of view.

08:28In terms of hearing, a mouse's hearing can go as high as 91 kHz, which is very, very high.

08:35Quite fascinating, huh?

08:41That's it for today.

08:42So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.

08:47Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!

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