Which Animal Hears Sounds Best?

Which Animal Hears Sounds Best? Our old friend the bat is the hearing champion of the mammal world. It makes ultrasonic sounds to locate its prey and measures the amount of time it takes until these sounds echo and come back.

But there is an animal that apparently uses a much more extraordinary variety of sounds. This animal is thought to be a direct response to bats.

Sounds outside the range people hear are called ultrasound. It is not that difficult to hear ultrasonic sounds, but humans are among the creatures with the most modest auditory abilities. Researchers at Strathclyde University in Scotland discovered that the honeycomb moth (Galleria mellonella), a dull, often boring and common moth, has the most extraordinary hearing of all animals. This moth, which can hear sound frequencies reaching up to 300kHz, defeats the insignificant abilities of us humans. People, on the other hand, can hear it up to 20kHz if the stone is cracked.

Researchers believe that the moth often uses this extraordinary sense of hearing to circumvent its main predator; that is the bat… The honeycomb moth, which is very common in Eurasia, which is its natural habitat, is also seen in North America, where it is an exotic species (later species) for various types of bats. Voice positioning is an effective behavior for bats because it is so unusual. A bat’s prey doesn’t realize it’s being targeted. That’s why honeycomb moths evolved to hear the bat’s greatest weapon in order to avoid being a target.

It is also possible for moths to use these high-frequency abilities to communicate with other moths that are outside of bats’ hearing range.