Dog hearing, how good is it? A little hint…don’t be surprised when you whisper “walk” to find him at the door waiting.
Dogs are able to hear at ultrasonic level, they hear two octaves higher than we do. The evolutionary reason goes back to survival and the dogs being able to hear rodent noises, I think I’m happy only hearing the cow. Dogs are able to hear more that the higher pitched noises though. They’re also able to detect and localize sound with amazing accuracy. Consider that a newborn puppy is born with closed ear canals and by seven weeks they hear and translate sounds better than we ever will – it’s astounding.
Dogs have larger ears than us and are much more able to move them. Dogs have about 30 muscles in their ears, we only have nine. This allows them to better zero in on a sound – floppy eared dogs are at a slight disadvantage. Even our Doodles with their heavy ear flaps are able to hear four times better than us – which does explain how Winston is able to hear me creeping about, ever so stealthily, at night.
This knowledge might help us to understand our Dood’s fear of the vacuum and/or thunderstorms. Vacuum motors make high pitched noises that we don’t hear, yet they send our Doodles running for cover – Winston may be given permission to be outside on the next cleaning day. Imagine hearing a thunderstorm on your surround sound – now turn the volume up four times your normal listening level. I suspect we’d all run for cover.
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