How do different animals hear?

Follow me please class. In this lesson, we’re going to be learning about ears and how animals hear.

Now all animals with ears hear sound, which is made up of invisible waves that create vibrations in the air. High-pitched sounds make fast vibrations, and low-pitched sounds make slower vibrations. Some animals are very good at detecting certain types of vibrations, as you’ll find out.

Dogs are very good at hearing. They can hear sounds from 4 times further away than human ears can. They can also hear ultrasound, which is sound so high-pitched that humans can’t hear it.

Dogs also have lots of small muscles in their ears, so they can point them very precisely to work out what direction a sound is coming from and how far away it is.

Ah, the barn owl, another great listener. This bird of prey hunts at night and uses its super-sensitive hearing to find food, like mice.

The feathers on the edge of its face are arranged in a sort of disc shape. This helps focus sounds, a bit like the shape of a human’s ear does.

One of the barn owl’s ears is also positioned slightly higher than the other. This helps the owl pinpoint the height and the direction of the where sounds are coming from – very useful for hunting small prey when you’re flying high above.

Pigeons can hear something called infrasound, which is sound with too low a pitch for humans to hear. This means pigeons can hear the far-off rumblings of storms, earthquakes and volcanoes, and change course to avoid them.

Those clever pigeons, they always seem to know when the weather’s about to – change. Ah…