How Keen is a Cats Hearing?

A cat's ears are a lot more sharper than those of its owner, which is why cats hate noisy households.
Loud music, yelling and shouting are agony to the delicate hearing of the typical cat.
It's the specialized hunting behavior of cats that's led in their improved sense of hearing.
While dogs possess a much keener acoustic range than human beings, cats surpass even dogs in their ability to hear high-pitched sounds.
This is because humans and dogs rely most on tracking and snaring their prey, whereas cats choose to lie in wait in ambush and listen very carefully for the most diminutive sound.
If they're to succeed as lurking hunters, they must be able to detect the most minute rustlings and screeches, and must be able to pick out accurate direction and distance to pinpoint their intended target.
This demands a good deal more sensitivity than we as humans have, and laboratory tests have confirmed that domesticated cats do, indeed, possess a very delicate tuning ability.
At the more low-pitched sounds, there is little difference between humans, dogs and cats...
this isn't where it matters though...
if you're a hunter of small rodents and birds.
At the more high-pitched levels, humans in the prime of life are capable of hearing sounds up to approximately 20,000 cycles per second.
This drops to roughly 12,000 in humans of retirement age.
Dogs can manage up to 35,000 to 40,000 cycles per second, therefore they're able to detect sounds that we can't.
Cats, on the other hand, can hear sounds up to an amazing 100,000 cycles per second.
This matches easily to the high frequency of mouse sounds, which can be emitted up to the same level.
Indeed no mouse is safe from the alert ears of the predatory cat.
Views differ as to how high the cat is capable of hearing at full sensitivity.
A few authorities think that a truly delicate response is only plausible for the domesticated cat at up to 45,000 cycles per second.
Many experts acknowledge, nevertheless, that the number is closer to 60,000 to 65,000, which would be adequate to hear most prey sounds.
This acoustic ability of domestic cats explains why they occasionally seem to possess supernatural powers.
They hear and interpret the ultrasonic sounds that precede a noisy activity and react fittingly before we have even realized that something strange is fixing occur.
And don't overlook the ability regarding your dozing cat.
Even while taking a nap the feline's ears are operating.
Whenever something stirring is noticed the cat is awakened and reacting in a blink of an eye.
Maybe this is how come it sleeps twice as long as we do, catching up on its sleep.
Sadly for older cats, this excellent keenness for hearing doesn't hold up forever.
By the age of around five years a cat begins to lose its range of hearing and when it has become older, it's oftentimes virtually deaf.
This explains why older cats occasionally fall victim to speeding cars.
It's not that they're too slow to avoid being hit, just that they simply don't hear the cars racing towards them.
Younger cats are not only adept at picking up high-pitched screeches, they're also superb at detecting exact direction.
They can differentiate between two sounds which are merely 18 inches apart at a distance of 60 feet; they can single out, with ease, two sounds that are coming from the same direction, but at different distances; and they can separate two sounds that have only a half-tone of difference between them.
In some tests this last ability was registered to one-tenth of a tone.