The greater wax moth (Galleria mellonella) has the best hearing of any animal yet measured, detecting frequencies up to 300 kHz — fifteen times the 20 kHz ceiling of human hearing. That record was set by researchers at the University of Strathclyde and published in Biology Letters in 2013. Other standouts span the opposite end of the spectrum: homing pigeons detect infrasound down to 0.05 Hz, African elephants hear rumbles at roughly 14 Hz, and bottlenose dolphins reach about 150 kHz. Below are 13 animals with the most remarkable hearing on Earth, each with its measured frequency range and the adaptation behind it.
Animals with Exceptional Hearing
We will examine the top animals with some of the best hearing abilities. These amazing creatures, such as bats and dolphins equipped with echolocation capabilities to detect their environment better or even a greater wax moth with an extraordinary hearing range, demonstrate how varied and specialized our animal kingdom can be regarding audio acuity.
Let’s explore this fantastic world more closely by looking at these incredible beasts and analyzing what makes them so special in terms of auditory perception!
1. Greater Wax Moth
The greater wax moth’s hearing capabilities are exceptionally sensitive and range up to 300 kHz, allowing it to hear the vocalizations of its main predator, bats. This remarkable capacity is an example of fantastic adaptation found in the animal kingdom, which gives them a great advantage over humans, whose auditory ability maxes out at 20kHz.
Its highly developed power of listening allows these moths to identify threats they may not be able to detect otherwise with their regular senses. This species‘ strong ability to both hear and respond demonstrates just how truly adaptable creatures can be when faced with external challenges like predation or other environmental changes.
See Related: Are Insects Animals? Exploring the Truth
2. Bats
Bats possess a remarkable auditory capability. Across the roughly 1,400 known bat species, hearing spans about 700 Hz to 200 kHz, with the most sensitive band sitting between 15 kHz and 90 kHz. The species that reach 200 kHz pay for it at the bottom of the range — they hear poorly below about 10 kHz.
The old line that bats are blind is simply wrong. Every bat species can see; fruit bats in particular have excellent low-light vision. Echolocation supplements sight in total darkness rather than replacing it. Both are also, incidentally, three-letter animals — bat and owl are two of roughly 41 three-letter animal names in English. That hearing is paired with genuinely extreme flight performance: the Mexican free-tailed bat is the fastest animal in powered level flight ever measured, at 160 km/h (100 mph), while the hibernating Indiana bat shows how vulnerable the same group is to white-nose syndrome.
Their specialized hearing and echolocation are utilized for tracking prey and orienting themselves during flight. Through emitting chirps in conjunction with clicks while traveling through the airwaves, they employ these sound waves as navigational tools, showcasing their astoundingly successful adjustment to nighttime life forms.
See Related: Indiana Bat: Why Is It Endangered?
3. Owls
Owls are renowned for their hearing, though not because their frequency range is unusual. The barn owl hears from roughly 200 Hz to 12 kHz — broadly similar to many other birds. What sets owls apart is precision. Their ear openings sit asymmetrically, one higher and further forward than the other, so a sound arrives at each ear at a fractionally different time and intensity.
That asymmetry, combined with the stiff facial ruff that funnels sound toward the ears, gives the barn owl a minimum audible angle of about 4 degrees for broadband noise — among the sharpest sound localisation measured in any animal. Roger Payne first documented the asymmetric-ear mechanism in 1971. See the full range of species in our guide to the different types of owls.
Due to their extraordinary hearing capacity, owls can detect prey when it is dark out by relying solely on their auditory sense – underscoring its importance for them and ultimately securing successful survival.
See Related: Forest Owlet: Why is it critically endangered?
4. Elephants
African elephants hear from roughly 14 Hz up to about 12 kHz. Both ends of that range are unusual. The bottom sits well inside the infrasonic band, below the 20 Hz floor of human hearing, while the top is the lowest upper limit yet measured in any mammal — humans reach 20 kHz, dogs 45 kHz, cats 85 kHz. Elephants traded high-frequency sensitivity for low-frequency reach.
Their ears serve a second job entirely. The huge, thin, heavily vascularised flaps radiate heat, and an elephant flapping its ears on a hot day is running a cooling system, not listening harder.
With such expansive surfaces, areas enabling heat dispersion and thin ear flaps decrease temperatures. It showcases just how integral hearing can be within nature.
See Related: Difference Between African and Asian Elephants: A Comprehensive Comparison
5. Dogs
Dogs hear from about 67 Hz to 45 kHz, more than doubling the human upper limit of 20 kHz. That is why a silent dog whistle, pitched somewhere between 23 kHz and 54 kHz, registers to a dog as a clear tone while a person standing beside it hears nothing at all.
Around 18 muscles control each ear, letting a dog twist and tilt the ear flap toward a sound rather than turning its whole head. Ear shape matters too: erect-eared breeds such as German shepherds localise sound slightly better than heavy drop-eared breeds, whose ear flaps physically damp incoming sound.
This remarkable adaptation assists dogs in being aware of things around them along with ensuring vital communication between other canines while allowing for predator recognition and navigation purposes too.
See Related: Do Dogs Smile? What Their Faces Actually Tell You
6. Cats
Cats have one of the broadest hearing ranges of any land mammal: 48 Hz to 85 kHz, measured at 70 dB SPL by Heffner and Heffner in 1985. That upper limit beats the dog’s 45 kHz and is more than four octaves above the human ceiling.
Each ear carries 32 muscles and swivels independently through about 180 degrees. The range is no accident — it maps almost exactly onto the ultrasonic squeaks mice and voles use to communicate, which a cat can hear from across a room.
This impressive hearing capacity is vital when hunting, as cats can use it to accurately locate and time their pounces on prey without fail.
See Related: Interesting Mexican Bobcats Facts
7. Horses
Horses’ ears are an excellent adaptation that plays a major role in their survival and social behavior. Horses hear from roughly 55 Hz to 33.5 kHz, and with ten muscles per ear they can swivel each one through about 180 degrees independently, allowing them to track two sound sources at once. That independent movement is also a readable emotional signal — ears pinned flat mean something very different from ears rotated forward.
This impressive hearing capability is vital for protecting herds and communicating emotions within them efficiently through sounds they make together. Ultimately, this sensitive organ has enabled the success of horses both inside and outside domestic settings today.
8. Dolphins
Dolphins have adapted to their marine habitat and showcase this by using echolocation for hunting as well as having superior hearing abilities underwater. They generate clicks or chirps and pick up the echoes that bounce off prey or other objects around them.
Bottlenose dolphins hear from about 75 Hz to 150 kHz, with their sharpest sensitivity between 40 kHz and 100 kHz — precisely the band their own echolocation clicks occupy. Even so they fall short of the greater wax moth’s 300 kHz.
More striking is that dolphins can turn their own hearing down. In conditioned-response experiments by Nachtigall and Supin, a trained bottlenose dolphin warned that a loud tone was coming dampened its hearing sensitivity by more than 10 decibels at that specific frequency — a built-in hearing protector no other mammal is known to control voluntarily. Freshwater species such as the South Asian river dolphin, which is functionally blind, depend on this acoustic sense almost entirely.
See Related: Hector’s Dolphin: Is It Endangered?
9. Rats
Rats are known for their amazing high-frequency hearing and the capacity to precisely recognize sounds, which helps them stay alive in a predatory world. Their range of listening is shifted towards higher sound frequencies than humans, allowing them to pick up on noises we can’t hear.
Rats hear from roughly 250 Hz to 80 kHz. The whole range is shifted upward relative to ours, which is why rats communicate in ultrasonic calls — including the 50 kHz chirps young rats produce during play, well above anything a person can hear.
Their localisation is precise as well: Heffner and Heffner measured rats pinpointing a click to within about 12 degrees, and a burst of white noise to within roughly 10 degrees. For a prey animal navigating dark burrows and open ground, that accuracy is the difference between escaping and not.
10. Pigeon
Homing pigeons hold the record at the opposite end of the spectrum from the wax moth. Behavioural testing has shown pigeons detecting infrasound as low as 0.05 Hz — one cycle every twenty seconds, four hundred times below the 20 Hz floor of human hearing.
Infrasound at that pitch travels hundreds of kilometres. Ocean surf, wind moving over mountain ranges and distant thunderstorms all generate it, and the leading explanation for pigeon homing is that birds use this low-frequency acoustic landscape as a navigational map. It is one of several senses birds combine; see our overview of the main types of birds for how differently avian groups are built.
Low-frequency listening plays an essential role in aiding pigeons with navigation. A pigeon released hundreds of kilometres from its loft may be hearing the acoustic signature of home long before any landmark comes into view, which is why infrasound sensitivity is now studied alongside magnetoreception and sun-compass orientation as a genuine component of avian navigation rather than a curiosity. Pigeon breeds bred for racing have been selected, knowingly or not, for exactly this ability.
See Related: Most Endangered Birds Around the World
11. Penguin
Hearing is vital to the Gentoo penguin’s ability to thrive and stay safe. Testing published in Royal Society Open Science found gentoo penguins responding to underwater sounds between 200 Hz and 6,000 Hz, and penguins generally hear best between 1 kHz and 4 kHz in air. That is a narrow band by the standards of this list, but it is tuned to exactly what a penguin needs: the calls of its own colony.
Because a gentoo must find one mate and one chick among thousands of near-identical birds, discrimination matters more than range. The same sensitivity makes them vulnerable to human noise — shipping and construction noise falls squarely inside their hearing band.
The extraordinary sensing power these animals have when listening underwater contributes greatly to safeguarding them throughout their lives. This is proof that they are amazingly equipped creatures!
12. Humpback whale
No baleen whale has ever had its hearing measured directly in the way a dolphin’s has — the animals are far too large to test in a laboratory. What we have are anatomical models and, since 2025, the first behavioural hearing experiments on wild humpbacks, published in Communications Biology. Those tests found humpbacks responding across roughly 80 Hz to 22 kHz, with best sensitivity somewhere near 2 kHz to 6 kHz.
That upper limit came as a surprise — it is higher than anatomical models predicted, meaning humpbacks are more exposed to high-frequency shipping and sonar noise than managers had assumed. It also means humpbacks are not ultrasonic specialists. Toothed whales such as the sperm whale echolocate at high frequencies; baleen whales sing low and listen low.
These majestic creatures have even developed special vocalizations solely dedicated to the purpose of auditory reception, which highlights their important relationship with sound waves and listening at a low-frequency range beyond what most other mammals are capable of achieving.
See Related: Dwarf Sperm Whales: Are they Endangered?
13. Rabbit
Rabbits’ hearing range is incredibly wide, allowing them to detect predators from a far distance and keep themselves safe as prey animals. They can identify sounds ranging from 360 Hz to 42,000 Hz.
Those long upright ears are not decorative. Each one pivots independently through nearly 270 degrees, working as a pair of movable parabolic collectors that let a rabbit scan for a predator in any direction without moving its body — and without interrupting feeding.
The same ears double as radiators. Blood vessels close to the surface dump heat, which is why desert species such as the jackrabbit have far larger ears than rabbits from cold climates.
See Related: These Are 13 of the Longest Living Animals on Earth
Animal Hearing Ranges Compared
Hearing “range” means the span of frequencies an animal can detect at all, measured in hertz (Hz) — cycles per second. Low numbers are deep rumbles; high numbers are shrill or ultrasonic. Humans sit at roughly 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, and that band narrows with age: most adults over 50 have already lost everything above about 12 kHz.
Here is how the animals on this list compare, using the best-supported published figures.
| Animal | Hearing range | What it is tuned for |
|---|---|---|
| Greater wax moth | up to 300 kHz | Hearing bat echolocation before the bat hears it |
| Bats | ~700 Hz – 200 kHz | Echolocation; most sensitive 15–90 kHz |
| Bottlenose dolphin | ~75 Hz – 150 kHz | Underwater echolocation; best 40–100 kHz |
| Cat | 48 Hz – 85 kHz | Ultrasonic rodent calls |
| Rat | ~250 Hz – 80 kHz | Ultrasonic communication and predator detection |
| Dog | 67 Hz – 45 kHz | Broad general-purpose range |
| Rabbit | 360 Hz – 42 kHz | Distant predator detection |
| Horse | 55 Hz – 33.5 kHz | Herd communication and threat detection |
| Humpback whale | ~80 Hz – 22 kHz (behavioural estimate) | Long-range song; best ~2–6 kHz |
| Human | 20 Hz – 20 kHz | Speech; best 2–5 kHz |
| Barn owl | ~200 Hz – 12 kHz | Pinpoint localisation, not range |
| African elephant | ~14 Hz – 12 kHz | Infrasonic rumbles over long distance |
| Gentoo penguin | 200 Hz – 6 kHz (underwater) | Recognising one mate in a colony |
| Homing pigeon | down to 0.05 Hz | Infrasonic navigation over hundreds of km |
Two patterns fall out of the table. First, nothing is good at everything — the elephant that hears 14 Hz gives up the top of the spectrum, and the bat that reaches 200 kHz hears badly below 10 kHz. Hearing range is a trade-off, not a score.
Second, body size predicts a lot of it. Small animals with small ear structures tend toward high frequencies; large animals tend toward low ones. The wavelength an ear can efficiently process scales with the physical size of the parts doing the processing.
How Scientists Measure Animal Hearing
Hearing figures quoted online vary widely for the same species, and the reason is usually methodology rather than disagreement about the animal. There are two main approaches, and they do not always produce the same answer.
Behavioural audiograms
An animal is trained to give a response — press a lever, touch a target, station at a paddle — whenever it hears a tone. The tone is then played at decreasing volumes across a sweep of frequencies until the animal stops responding. The resulting curve is the audiogram, and it is the gold standard because it measures what the animal actually perceives.
The catch is that it requires a trainable animal in a controlled acoustic space. That is why cats, dogs, horses and captive dolphins have excellent audiograms, and why baleen whales had none at all until researchers found a way to score behavioural responses in the open ocean.
Auditory evoked potentials
Electrodes placed on the skin record the electrical activity the auditory nerve and brainstem generate in response to a sound. No training is needed and the animal does not have to cooperate, which makes it the only workable method for wild, stranded or non-trainable species. It is how squid were shown to detect sound at all.
The limitation is that a nerve firing is not the same as an animal hearing something. Evoked-potential thresholds usually come out slightly higher — that is, less sensitive — than behavioural ones for the same species, so the two numbers are not directly interchangeable.
Why some published figures are unreliable
Three things go wrong often enough to be worth naming. Anatomical models, which infer hearing from the physical structure of the ear, are estimates and can be wrong — the 2025 humpback work found real sensitivity above what the models predicted. Ranges are also meaningless without a stated loudness: the cat’s 48 Hz to 85 kHz figure is specifically measured at 70 dB SPL, and a quieter threshold gives a narrower range.
Hearing is only one sense worth a record. A bloodhound’s nose is roughly 2,100 times more sensitive than a human’s, and a bear’s is better still. See the 12 animals with the best sense of smell
Finally, in-air and underwater figures are frequently mixed together. Sound behaves differently in water, and a marine mammal’s in-air audiogram is not comparable to its underwater one. Any list that presents a single number for a species without saying which medium it applies to should be treated with caution.
Which hears better, a cat or a dog?
The cat, on every measure that can be compared directly. A cat’s range of 48 Hz to 85 kHz beats a dog’s 67 Hz to 45 kHz at both ends — the cat hears lower and nearly an octave higher. Cats also carry 32 muscles per ear against roughly 18 in dogs, giving finer control over aiming each ear.
The reason is diet. Cats are obligate solitary hunters of small rodents, and rodent communication is ultrasonic — a cat’s upper limit sits right on top of it. Dogs evolved as cooperative pack hunters of larger prey, where hearing a companion’s call across distance mattered more than resolving a mouse squeak. Dogs do hold one advantage: they smell far better than cats.
Which animal has the worst hearing?
Among mammals, the naked mole-rat. It perceives sound only between roughly 0.5 kHz and 4 kHz — a fraction of the human range — and research published in Current Biology in 2020 found it is the only mammal known to lack cochlear amplification entirely. Its outer hair cells, which normally boost incoming sound, do not work.
That looks like a defect and probably is not one. Naked mole-rats live in sealed underground colonies where sound reverberates hard in narrow tunnels; researchers argue that damping amplification prevents their own constant chattering from becoming deafening. It is a reminder that “best” and “worst” hearing only mean anything relative to the environment an animal has to survive in.
Why Hearing Matters for Conservation
The practical reason to know an animal’s hearing range is noise. Human-generated sound now saturates most habitats, and whether a given source harms a given species depends entirely on whether it falls inside that species’ hearing band.
Shipping noise concentrates below 1 kHz, which puts it directly on top of baleen whale communication and, given the 2025 humpback findings, further into their sensitive range than previously assumed. Military and survey sonar operates in bands that overlap toothed whale echolocation. Gentoo penguins hear best between 1 and 4 kHz — the same band as most coastal construction.
On land the picture is similar. Traffic noise masks the low-frequency calls elephants use to coordinate across kilometres, and rodent ultrasound sits in a band that ultrasonic pest repellents deliberately target. Understanding how animal communication evolved is increasingly a prerequisite for protecting it.
The Wonders of Animal Ears
The human ear’s hearing capability range of 20Hz to 20000Hz is much lower than many other animals. These creatures possess highly sensitive hearing and can detect even distant storm sounds beyond our maximum frequency reach. For example, the greater wax moth has an extraordinary ability in this regard, which makes it easy for them to live peacefully in their environment and communicate accurately with each other through sound waves that humans would be completely oblivious to!
Though we may not have as much auditory capacity as some members from Kingdom Animalia, many species, including mammals, still rely heavily on precise audio detection. Thus having excellent ears can certainly give certain critters major advantages over us Homo sapiens when competing or surviving within any given habitat.
Ear Structures and Functions
Humans have three small muscles attached to each outer ear, but they are vestigial — they do not aim the ear and they play no part in hearing. Most people cannot contract them at all. Other mammals kept and expanded that machinery: cats have 32 muscles per ear, dogs about 18, and horses ten, each set capable of rotating the ear roughly 180 degrees toward a sound.
The trade-off is that humans turn the whole head instead, which is slower and gives away the movement. A cat can track a rustle in the grass without a predator or a prey animal seeing it react.
Many species have evolved hearing abilities that outmatch humans’ range—such as low frequencies and ultrasonic or infrasonic ranges. An incredible example is greater wax moths, whose perception extends up to 300 kHz, enabling them to evade bats! This diversity amongst animals shows just how intriguingly varied structures can be found throughout our animal kingdom regarding auditory prowess, like hearing detection at distances or various sounds containing different frequencies.
Adaptations for Different Environments
The animal world has developed specialized hearing abilities to meet the different needs of their environments. For example, African elephants have some of the biggest ears in nature, which help them collect sound waves and pick up subtle low-frequency vibrations from faraway places. They can hear other elephants up to about 10 kilometres away through the air under good conditions — and modelling suggests the seismic component of a deep rumble, travelling through the ground rather than the air, may be detectable further still.
Owls also possess a powerful sense of hearing that helps with hunting. Through asymmetrically placed ear structures, they can single out sounds more accurately than most animals, giving them an edge over their prey, such as rodents burrowing under snow. All these unique modifications demonstrate how finely tuned certain species’ listening capabilities have become for living optimally in their habitats.
Unique Hearing Abilities in the Animal Kingdom
The hearing ability of animals is fascinating and varied. Many creatures, such as bats or dolphins, possess echolocation to locate their surroundings, while elephants rely on seismic communication. By studying how animals hear sounds, we can understand more about how sound plays a key role within the animal kingdom for things like navigation and survival purposes.
This shows us why it is so essential for many species to be able to listen properly. Hearing allows them to interact with their environment and comprehend noises that otherwise would go undetected by human ears, proving its importance across the board!
Echolocation in Bats and Dolphins
Many species of animals, including bats and dolphins, have an incredible adaptation known as echolocation. They can create a detailed map of their environment by emitting high-frequency sound waves and listening to their returning echoes.
This biological sonar system allows these creatures to identify objects even in low visibility, significantly aiding navigation and hunting. Moreover employed by other animal species like shrews, certain whales, and some birds, demonstrating just how versatile hearing capabilities are within the animal kingdom. Such remarkable abilities showcase just how important sounds are for survival amongst many different kinds of animals!
Seismic Communication in Elephants
Hearing in the animal kingdom is immensely varied, as shown by elephants’ ability to communicate using seismic vibrations. These messages are communicated through low-frequency tremors generated when they stomp their feet on the ground and can be received from afar. This mode of communication serves many purposes for them, such as coordinating group activities or alerting them to potential danger while helping locate food sources too.
This remarkable form of expression demonstrates how versatile these creatures truly are. It also showcases a unique aspect of hearing that helps underscore its importance in this domain of living beings across the globe!
The Role of Hearing in Animal Communication and Survival
Hearing plays a critical role in the lives of many animals, from helping them communicate to allowing them to detect and evade predators. This adaptive capacity has been revealed through amazing traits like the echolocation possessed by bats and dolphins, seismic communication adopted by elephants, and an exceptional range of hearing found in creatures like the greater wax moth.
These remarkable examples demonstrate the diversity within this realm and its importance for survival throughout nature. The adaptability displayed shows that these animals are determinedly capable of facing various obstacles arising from their habitats.
Communication Among Animals
Hearing is essential in animal communication and cannot be undervalued. Through vocalizations, whistles, or clicks, animals can identify potential mates, alert each other to possible dangers, and find their prey.
To the creatures discussed earlier, many species depend on sound vibrations for survival, including horses that use different noises to dialogue between them. At the same time, moths rely upon it to detect bats chirping ultrasonically and avoid them accordingly. Thus, it demonstrates how vital auditory capacity is across the animal kingdom.
Navigation and Predator Detection
The auditory capabilities of animals are vitally important to their survival and success in the animal kingdom. These creatures use remarkable hearing ranges, as well as asymmetrically placed ears, such as those found on owls, for navigation and detecting potential threats like prey or predators during nighttime hours. Dolphins also possess an amazing skill called echolocation, which helps them hunt for food while avoiding danger.
Hearing is a fundamental part of many species’ defense mechanisms. Rabbits depend heavily on it to avoid approaching dangers with acute senses similar to our listening skills but more enhanced than ours could ever be! Animals have adapted effectively over time due to this sense, which serves multiple purposes both day and night—for hunting prey, navigating terrain, and even finding mates…
This emphasizes how essential hearing abilities truly are within the world’s wildlife populations – all serve powerful roles in promoting continued thriving despite natural hazards present everywhere around us today! The impressive power held by these senses needs Exploration so we can continue understanding what makes all living organisms unique from one another – showing just how much adaptation goes into each distinctive creature’s capacity for life outside its home environment, too!
Summary
The animal kingdom is remarkable for the wide range of creatures with exceptional hearing. From greater wax moths with an unparalleled capacity to bats and dolphins using echolocation, these amazing animals highlight how hardy their aural senses are in diverse settings.
We can witness this uniqueness when we take note of nature’s myriad sounds – like the powerful ears of wild beasts that go beyond our human perception. The resilient and adaptive qualities revealed by such extraordinary examples prompt us to recognize a stunning world outside our limited capabilities!
Frequently Asked Questions
What to Read Next
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What are animal ears called?
The visible outer ear of a mammal is called the pinna, or auricle. Birds have no external pinna at all — just a feather-covered ear opening. Insects such as the greater wax moth hear through a tympanal organ, a thin membrane stretched over an air sac, which is not an ear in the mammalian sense but performs the same job.
How do animals’ ears work?
Animals’ ears can translate sound waves to allow them to hear. Through the process, outer ear funnels capture sounds and direct them into the middle ear, where they become mechanical energy passed on via fluids in their inner ear so that the brain can interpret them as nerve signals. In this manner, creatures can perceive audible noises like sounds with their ears.
Why do animals have different ears?
Different animals have adapted their hearing capabilities by evolving ears of different sizes and shapes. This has allowed predators to better focus on potential prey, as the shape of their ear directs sound in front. Consequently, it gives them an advantage when hunting for food.u003cbru003eu003cbru003eThis diversity allows creatures to become more efficient inhabitants within a specific environment; each species is now well equipped with its own auditory senses tailored to how it lives and operates around us.
Do all animals have ears?
No. Snakes have no external ear or eardrum and pick up ground-borne vibration through the jawbone, which is connected to the inner ear. Many insects hear through tympanal organs located on the legs, thorax or abdomen rather than the head. Fish detect sound through the lateral line and inner-ear otoliths. Having no visible ear is not the same as being deaf.
Are any species of animals deaf?
Very few animals are genuinely deaf. Cephalopods were long assumed to be, but that has been overturned: squid, cuttlefish and octopus detect sound through statocysts, balance organs that work as accelerometers. Auditory evoked potential testing on longfin squid recorded responses between 30 Hz and 500 Hz, with best sensitivity around 100 to 200 Hz. What cephalopods cannot do is detect sound pressure — they sense the particle-motion component of a sound field instead, much as most fish do.
Which animal has the best hearing in the world?
The greater wax moth has the best hearing in the animal kingdom. It can hear sound frequencies up to 300 kHz, which is 15 times higher than the highest pitch a human can hear.
What land animal has the best hearing?
Measured by frequency range, the greater wax moth — a land animal — leads everything at 300 kHz. Among land mammals, bats reach the highest frequencies at up to 200 kHz. Cats hold the widest range of any common land mammal at 48 Hz to 85 kHz, and dogs reach 45 kHz. If the question is precision rather than range, the barn owl wins: it localises a sound to within about 4 degrees.
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