 |
 |
Birds and Hearing Range
Name: Pedro
Status: N/A
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
Is there a frequency which all birds can
listen to but man can't? For example dogs have a specific
frequency which they can listen while we don't. Thank you for your help.
Replies:
Hi Pedro!
that question was already answered by NEWTON in 2003.
Look at the archives.
But there are academic studies and publications as
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America --
November 1978 -- Volume 64, Issue S1, p. S4
Permissions for Reuse
"Behavior and psychophysics of hearing in birds
R. Dooling
Field Research Center, Rockefeller University,
Millbrook, NY 12545
Psychophysical investigations of hearing in a number
of avian species over the last decade have added
significantly to our knowledge of hearing capabilities
characteristic of this vertebrate group. Behavioral
measures of absolute auditory sensitivity in a wide
variety of bird species show a region of maximum
sensitivity between 1 and 5 kHz with a rapid decrease
in sensitivity at higher frequencies. On the basis of
this general measure, birds fall between two other
major vertebrate groups: reptiles and mammals.
Discrimination and masking data from birds include
measures of frequency, intensity, and duration
difference limens; critical ratios, critical bands,
and psychophysical tuning curves. There are also data
on temporal summation, temporal resolving power, and
temporary threshold shift from noise exposure. Taken
together these data suggest that, in the region of 15
kHz, birds show a level of hearing sensitivity similar
in most respects to that found for the most sensitive
members of the class Mammalia with avian performance
clearly inferior above and below this range of
frequencies. Possible exceptions to this general
picture must include the echolocating oilbird and
growing evidence that pigeons are sensitive to
infrasound at moderate intensity levels. The relation
among critical ratio, critical band, and intensity
difference limen measures in the parakeet is similar
to that described for the human, but the pattern of
masking as a function of frequency is dramatically
different from that observed in mammals. Examples of a
correspondence between hearing sensitivity and
vocalizations can be demonstrated in a number of
species. ©1978 Acoustical Society of America"
And beeing a brazilian i am glad that someone from
Brasil is profiting from Newton!
Thanks for asking us!
Mabel (Dr. Mabel M.Rodrigues)
Because of the great diversity of birds, I don't think
we could say there is a frequency that "all" birds could
hear that humans can't. Many songbirds appear to hear in
frequencies higher than we can, but larger birds probably
have hearing ranges more like ours.
J. Elliott
Click here to return to the Zoology Archives
| |
Update: June 2012
|
|
