12 interesting facts about hearing
- The hearing of a dog is more sensitive than humans. Dogs can hear much higher frequencies, which is why they respond to “silent” dog whistles.
- Crickets have their hearing organs in their knees.
- If you cannot carry on a conversation in the presence of noise, it is too loud for your ears and can potentially cause hearing loss.
- Snakes do not have ears, but their tongues are sensitive to sound vibrations.
- Hearing threshold and the ability to localize sound sources are reduced underwater, in which the speed of sound is faster than in air.
- Underwater hearing is by bone conduction, and localization of sound appears to depend on differences in amplitude detected by bone conduction.
- The whole area of the middle ear is no bigger than an M&M.
- Not all sounds are normally audible to all animals. Each species has a range of normal hearing for both loudness (amplitude) and pitch (frequency).
- 42% of adults suffer with some sort of balance problem at some point in time.
- Frequencies higher than audio are referred to as ultrasonic, while frequencies below audio are referred to as infrasonic.
- One of every 1,000 infants is born totally deaf.
- Snakes sense infrasound through their bellies, and whales, giraffes, dolphins and elephants use it for communication.
