Have you ever asked yourself what the differences are between your hearing abilities and those of your cat’s? How is a cat’s sense of hearing different from ours? And what do cats really hear?
For starters, felines are among the many creatures with extremely heightened senses. A cat’s senses differ from human senses in a variety of ways. One of the most notable differences lies in the fact that felines can hear different frequencies than humans.
Kitties are simply born with evolved senses. It’s not hearing aids, high-quality cat food, or clean ears that expand their hearing range. That, however, doesn’t mean that cats don’t require special nutrition or regular ear check-ups.
So What Do Cats Hear? Range And Frequency
When it comes to a cat’s hearing range, the low-end scale starts similar to a human’s hearing range.
Felines can detect low-pitched sounds at approximately 55 Hz. Cats hear a vast variety of frequencies and are considered to hear better than most mammals. And unlike other animals with acute hearing, feline furballs don’t use ultrasound when communicating.
So cats can, indeed, hear ultrasonic sounds, but they don’t use ultrasound to communicate.
Cats hear better than dogs. On the high-pitched scale, dogs have a hearing range of up to 45 kHz; humans, of up to 20 kHz; and cats of up to 79 kHz. In other words, your fluffy pet’s hearing is not only excellent in general, but also quite sensitive.
An average cat can hear higher frequencies, approximately 1.6 octaves higher than humans can.
Moreover, your kitty’s hearing sensitivity is further evolved due to its big pinnae (outer ears). The cat’s outer ears not only amplify sounds, but they also help the kitty locate the sound’s source. These admirable hearing abilities are partially responsible for the fact that felines are great hunters.
When kitties are listening in on something, their ears are usually swiveling in that direction. Cats can point their ears forward, backward, and even sideways to determine a certain sound’s source.
Is There Any Relation Between Cat Food And Cat Hearing?
As carnivores, cats get their vital nutrition from meat and meat by-products. These nutritious ingredients include proteins, taurine, healthy fats, and vitamins and minerals.
Lack of Vitamin A, B12, and other B-category vitamins can have some nasty results for your cat. For example, vitamin deficiencies can cause liver problems, hearing loss, heart disease, and so forth.
Folic acid deficiency is a common problem for many feral and domestic cats. Some studies show that such deficiency is related to hearing loss and diseases of the small intestine.
While there is no ultimate “super” food that can aid your kitty’s hearing, it’s a well-known fact that lack of enough Vitamin A acts as the main culprit for hearing loss in cats.
If you think your kitty is experiencing hearing problems, it’s best to consult with a vet. In some cases, hearing loss can be a genetic problem. In others, it can simply be triggered by the fact that your cat is getting older.
Deaf Cats And Potential Options
Some cats are hard of hearing, and for these cats, there’s no easy fix.
One company did develop hearing aids for cats, but they will be incredibly expensive, and not even guaranteed to be available on a retail level.
For cats who are hard of hearing, the best thing you can do is to keep them indoors, since it is unsafe for them to be outside where their compromised senses can lead them to danger.
That Blue-Eyed White Cat Deafness Myth …
A popular hearing-related myth is that all white-colored cats, which have blue eyes, are deaf.
Contrary to this popular belief, not all blue-eyed white cats are deaf. Your kitty can be white and hear perfectly well even if it has blue irises.
However such rare kitties are indeed more prone to genetic deafness than other cats. Sometimes white cats with heterochromatic eyes (bicolored eyes) can experience hearing problems on the side of their blue eye. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that you should shy away from adopting a cute white kitten just because it may or may not experience hearing problems.
By Beth Adelman, MS
Reading Time: 4 minutesIn a previous post I talked about how cats’ very different senses mean they do not experience the world the same way we do. That is certainly true for a cat’s superior sense of hearing. Cats can hear a mouse squeaking underground or a cockroach scurrying inside the wall. Their amazing ears enable them to locate their prey by sound—something most people forget when they’re playing with their cat and offer no auditory stimulation.
Cock an Ear
Cats can hear over a range of about 10.5 octaves (among the broadest for any mammal, including dogs). By contrast, humans hear about 9.3 octaves. Cats’ hearing is especially sensitive at the middle frequencies; when they’re staring at the wall, they are probably hearing something moving inside it. That means your cat can hear you when you whisper, so no need to shout. It also means cats are easily distracted, and easily startled, by sounds. And easily excited by the kinds of sounds prey animals make, like squeaks and rustling noises.
Because they can hear at the ultrasonic level, mechanical whining noises from things like refrigerators, air conditioners, fans, and vacuum cleaners may be especially annoying.
Their large pinnae help collect and pinpoint sounds, especially higher frequency sounds (think mouse squeaking). The ears swivel up to 180 degrees and can rotate independently, like two radar dishes. As a result, cats are very efficient at discriminating between two different sounds coming from sources only three inches apart, which helps them track movement of prey in dim light.
Eye Bright
Their eyes are also specialized to maximize light input. Cat have more rods (cells sensitive to low light) in their eyes and fewer cones (cells sensitive to bright light and color). The distance between the cat’s pupil and the retina is short, so very little light is scattered as it moves through the eye. Immediately behind the retina is a layer of cells, called the tapetum lucidum, which reflects unabsorbed light back toward the visual receptors. This is what makes cats eyes glow when light is shined on them.
The cat’s pupils can narrow to a slit and open to almost the full size of the eye. When a cat’s pupil is fully opened, the illumination of the retina is equivalent to that found in bats and badgers.
Vision Quest
The cat’s eyes are anatomically large and set forward, giving them a wide field of binocular vision (the area both eyes can see) of about 100 degrees, plus additional peripheral vision of 50 degrees on each side—for a total field of vision of a whopping 200 degrees. The human total is about 170, with about 100 degrees of that peripheral vision. But it’s likely that cats’ peripheral vision is way keener than ours.
Knowing that cats can see farther to the sides and behind them, think about how it can startle your cat when you approach from behind, reach for her, or move things over her head or behind her.
The structure of the feline eye is optimized to detect rapid movement, and cats can make quick eye movements in response to fast-moving objects. However, they’re not as good at detecting slow movements.
Cats pay a price for their ability to detect movement and see in low light, though. They have relatively poor sensitivity to color; they’re better able to see in the spectrum of shorter light waves (green and blue) and less able to see in longer ones (red).
Visual Aids
The position of the eyes on the head means cats cannot focus well directly in front of them, so they’re also slightly myopic; if cats could read, they would need reading glasses. They focus best on objects between 7 and 20 feet away. They’re also slow to transfer their focus from things that are near to things that are distant, and vice versa.
Because cats can’t see well directly in front of them at close range, they use their whiskers to augment their close-up vision. That’s why their whiskers rotate forward when they’re playing with a toy. It’s also why cats often swat at objects to establish their exact position, and why it seems like they can’t find the treat you’re holding out right in front of them.
Those whiskers are only part of your cat’s tactile equipment. Cats have touch receptors on their skin, paws, and the whisker follicles. Touch is the earliest sense developed in kittens. In fact, it develops about five weeks before a kitten is born, and the balance organ is functional about a week before birth.
Whiskers, or vibrissae, are long, thick hairs set deep into the tissue. They’re on the muzzle, the sides of the head, above the eyes, and at the wrists and ankles. Whiskers provide sensory information about the position of the cat’s head and legs relative to nearby objects and are so sensitive that they can detect changes in air currents. Sensory input from whiskers is coordinated in the brain with visual information.
The paws are highly sensitive, with highest density of receptors in the body found between the foot and toe pads. Highly sensitive specialized cells in the soft tissue at the base of each claw produce signals about the degree of extension and sideways displacement for each claw. Cats use this information to manipulate prey, investigate new items, walk on narrow surfaces, and maintain their footing while leaping.
Understanding how much sensory information is taken in through the claws that is vital to the way cats move through their world, imagine what is lost to a declawed cat.
Published April 6, 2020