Hearing in subhuman mammals
- Key People:
- Georg von Békésy
- Related Topics:
- human ear
- inner ear
- bone conduction
- hearing
- air conduction
Primates
The hearing of other species in the division of mammals to which humankind belongs has always been of special interest. A number of species have been studied, including monkeys, marmosets, and chimpanzees among the primates considered as the most advanced, the anthropoids; and tree shrews, lemurs, and lorises among the more primitive.
By using a variety of training methods with chimpanzees, monkeys, and marmosets, behavioral thresholds have been recorded in response to sounds of different intensities and frequencies. When compared with each other and with humans, it has been found that the hearing sensitivity of these animals and humans is remarkably similar over a range of frequencies from 100 to 5,000 hertz, after which the sensitivity begins to differ. The differences observed at the higher frequencies, however, may be partly attributed to variations in experimental procedures. Thus, the results for the chimpanzee stop at 8,192 hertz because this was the highest tone used in the tests. Other observations have shown that chimpanzees can hear tones up to about 33,000 hertz and that young human subjects often hear tones as high as 24,000 hertz. It is also evident that monkeys and marmosets of the species studied can hear still higher tones.
Common laboratory animals
Certain mammals have long been favourite subjects for various kinds of biological studies in the laboratory, largely because of their convenient size, hardiness under caged conditions, and gentle temperament. Familiar among these are cats, dogs, guinea pigs, rats, mice, rabbits, and, more recently, hamsters, chinchillas, and gerbils. Auditory sensitivity functions have been obtained in these animals by a variety of behavioral and electrophysiological methods.
When measured behaviorally by conditioned responses and then plotted on a curve, the auditory threshold sensitivity of cats, guinea pigs, and chinchillas is much the same—a progressive improvement in sensitivity as the frequency is raised until the middle tones (about 500 to 5,000 hertz) are reached, at which point sensitivity tends to remain the same, and then shows a rapid loss in the upper frequencies. There are differences, however, in the maximum sensitivity attained in the middle region, with the guinea pig the least sensitive and the cat the most sensitive of the three species.
Sensory responses in the cochlea of mammals have been measured electrophysiologically by placing an electrode on the round window membrane. Unlike behavioral curves, however, the curves obtained by plotting the sound required to produce an arbitrary amount of electrical potential of the cochlea do not represent auditory thresholds. Instead, their usefulness is largely in their shapes, which indicate in a relative way the regions of good and poor sensitivity. In addition, these curves represent the performance of the peripheral portion of the auditory mechanism up to the point at which the sound stimulus activates the sensory hair cells in which the potentials are generated. Hence, unlike the curves obtained by behavioral responses, those obtained by cochlear potential methods do not indicate the performance of the central auditory nervous system (the nerve connections between the ear and brain and those parts of the brain in which neural impulses from the ear are processed to produce behavioral responses).
In the simpler animals, the two types of curves are much alike, judging from the very limited evidence available. In mammals, however, the behavioral curves differ from the cochlear potential curves in three ways. In the behavioral curves there is (1) an exaggerated gain in sensitivity to tones of low frequency, (2) a greater sensitivity to the medium-high tones, and (3) a more rapid loss of sensitivity to the extreme-high tones and a lower frequency of the upper limit. These differences are believed to arise mainly through the elaborate neural processing that takes place in the more highly developed mammalian nervous system, a processing that improves the sensitivitity to high-frequency tones but reaches a limit of effectiveness and finally fails above some frequency limit. With these conditions in mind, the electrophysiological curves can be used to predict reasonably well an animal’s behavioral responses to sound waves.
Large mammals
Because most of the mammals in which hearing has been studied by laboratory methods are small, much less is known about the auditory capabilities of large ones, even of such domesticated animals as horses and cows. Nevertheless, it is usually assumed that the auditory capabilities of these animals are much like those of humans. At least they hear sounds in the human vocal range, because they seem to respond to verbal signals. Elephants, for example, trained as working animals, are said to obey as many as 30 different commands. A number of wild animals of medium and large size—raccoons, opossums, and several members of the cat and dog families—have been studied electrophysiologically by the cochlear-response method. Their sensitivity curves are fairly similar in form and in the upper limits attained.
Marine mammals
Of special interest are the sea mammals, which have been derived from early land species and which have undergone certain changes in order to adapt themselves to at least a partially aquatic existence. In the course of adapting to marine conditions, however, some sea mammals, such as seals and sea lions, seem to have made only limited alterations in their ear structures. In addition to being able to close the meatus when diving, their pinnas have been greatly reduced or essentially lost, a feature of streamlining for rapid progress through the water.
There are three possible ways that the hearing of marine mammals might be adapted to an aquatic environment: (1) unchanged aerial hearing, with no aquatic adaptation, (2) conversion to an aquatic type of hearing with loss of good hearing for aerial sounds, and (3) development of some kind of double system, with at least serviceable reception of both aerial and aquatic vibrations. In a study of hearing in the common seal, in which responses to aerial and aquatic stimuli were compared, it was found that this animal has a greater sensitivity to aquatic sounds, especially in the upper frequencies, which extended to the remarkably high frequency of 160,000 hertz. Yet, although the seal has made an adjustment for hearing in water, it has not sacrificed the quality of its aerial hearing, which remains at an excellent level, especially for one frequency around 2,000 hertz and another around 12,000 hertz. These differences in auditory senstivity suggest that the mechanisms in this animal for aerial and aquatic hearing are somehow different, but no complete explanation of the adaptations has yet been found.
Whales, on the other hand, have converted their ears to a truly aquatic form, apparently with some sacrifice of aerial reception. The study of their ears and hearing has been carried out in only a few species of the toothed whales, which produce sounds and use their ears in the process of echolocation (see next section).
The ear of whales has undergone extensive changes. The pinna is absent and the external ear opening has been reduced to such a minute size, almost a pinhole in some species, that it no longer serves as a path for the entrance of sound. The eardrum, although present in a modified form, seems to serve no useful purpose; it is connected to the malleus only by a ligament, and this connection can be cut without an ensuing loss of sound reception. The usual three ossicles of the middle ear are present, with the footplate of the stapes resting in the oval window. These ossicles are much more massive than the ordinary mammalian ossicles.
It appears that the whale ear has been converted to a true aquatic type, functioning according to principles similar to those found in the ears of fishes, as described earlier. Sound vibrations in the water readily pass through the tissues of the head and reach the deep-lying middle- and inner-ear structures. Probably the ossicles represent an inertial mass in somewhat the same way that the otolithic body does in fishes. Because of their inertia, the ossicles tend to move with smaller amplitudes and in different phase relations when the tissues of the head, including parts of the cochlea, are set in vibration. This difference in relative motion produces an alternating displacement of the cochlear fluid, which is in contact with the footplate of the stapes and which can be set in motion because of the presence of a pocket of gas in the region of the round window. The performance of the whale ear has been measured in an exact manner throughout the frequency range in one species, the bottle-nosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus). By a conditioned-response method, it has been found that this animal possesses excellent auditory sensitivity that extends well into the high frequencies.
Echolocation in bats
Bats are divided into the large bats and the small bats. With one or two exceptions, the large bats live on fruits and find their way visually. The small bats feed mostly on insects, catching them on the wing by a process known as echolocation. As was mentioned earlier, echolocation is a process in which an animal produces sounds and listens for the echoes reflected from surfaces and objects in the environment. From the information contained in these echoes, the animal is able to perceive the objects and their spatial relations.
Bats produce sounds with the larynx, an organ in the throat that has undergone certain adaptations that make it unusually effective in producing intense, high-frequency sounds. The character of the sounds varies with the species and also with the particular activity. On striking a small object such as a flying insect, the emitted sounds are reflected with only a small fraction of their original energy; the sound is further weakened before reaching the ears of the bat when it must travel some distance through the air.
Although the frequency of bat cries varies with species, their cries usually occur in a range between 80,000 and 30,000 hertz. In most species, such as Myotis lucifugus and Eptesicus fuscus, the cry is a frequency-modulated pulse of sound; it begins at a high frequency, say, of 70,000 hertz, and in about 0.2 second declines in frequency to about 33,000 hertz. The starting frequency may vary, even in successive cries; a second pulse might begin at 60,000 and end at 30,000 hertz. The greatest energy in the cry is usually in the middle of this frequency range, perhaps around 50,000 hertz in the species mentioned above.
The use of such high frequencies is an essential feature of the bat’s sonar system. In order to determine the nature of objects by reflected sounds, it is necessary that the wavelengths of the sound be small in relation to the dimensions of the objects—indeed, as small as possible if fine details are to be represented.
An important problem of echolocation is how the bat is able to detect reflected sounds, often in the presence of disturbing noises, and to obtain the information necessary for tracking and catching an insect as well as discriminating between this object and others in the environment. This problem involves considering first the structure of the auditory mechanism in bats and then the nature of their hearing.
The external ear of bats is usually well developed. In most species the pinna is large relative to the size of the head, and in those species called the whispering bats, because they make such faint sounds, this structure is huge. With its large surface, the pinna acts as an efficient collector and resonator of high-frequency sounds. It is also freely movable and can be rotated and inclined in various ways. The meatus leads inward to the eardrum and, as already mentioned, contains a valve that can be closed to reduce the entrance of sounds. The middle ear of bats is of the usual mammalian pattern—a three-part ossicular chain—but its structure is impressive in the extraordinary delicacy of the moving parts. The two tympanic muscles, however, are relatively large.
The cochlea of bats also shows the general mammalian form, but there are variations that may be significant for the special functions that are performed by this ear. The basilar membrane is not particularly well developed; it is short in comparison with that of most mammals, and its structural variation from basal to apical ends is only moderate in extent. Whereas most basilar membranes are rather strongly tapered in width, being narrow at the basal end of the cochlea and several times broader near the apical end, in the bat there is only a slight taper, between twofold and threefold. Another curious feature in the cochlea of bats is the presence of local thickenings of the basilar membrane that may add to the stiffness of the cochlear structure.
The auditory portion of the nervous system has undergone extraordinary development in bats. The regions concerned with hearing are relatively enormous, which is in accord with the great predominance of hearing over the other senses in this animal.
The hearing of bats has been studied by both electrophysiological and behavioral methods. In the species Myotis lucifugus, electrophysiological measurements of cochlear potentials indicate that response is poor in the low frequencies but improves fairly steadily until the range of 2,000 to 5,000 hertz is reached, at which it tends to level off. Beyond 15,000 hertz there are many irregularities but, in general, the sensitivity declines at a rapid rate. The results of similar studies on a specimen of Eptesicus fuscus are much the same as those for Myotis, though the observations were not extended into the lowest frequencies. The most sensitive range for this species is around 4,000 to 15,000 hertz, after which there is a fairly rapid decline in the upper frequencies.
The behavioral threshold curve for Eptesicus has a markedly different form. There is a rapid improvement in sensitivity from 2,500 to 10,000 hertz, but the greatest sensitivity is in two peak areas, from 10,000 to 30,000 hertz and from 50,000 to 70,000 hertz, with a separation by a moderate reduction around 40,000 hertz.
There are other peculiarities of the behavioral sensitivity of Eptesicus to sound stimuli that are of particular interest. The rapid loss of sensitivity to tones around 40,000 hertz may be caused by a failure of neural processing for these tones. The slope of the low-frequency end of the curve is unexpectedly steep, and this appears in a region where the cochlear response is passing through its maximum. Nothing like this has been observed in other animals; it seems to be a peculiarity of the bat.
When the cochlear responses of bats are compared with similar responses in other small mammals—as, for example, the rat—there is a general similarity in the results. The rat, however, has better sensitivity as measured by this method, reaching a level of especially good acuity in the range from 20,000 to 60,000 hertz, the range in which the bat sensitivity falls off rapidly. As mentioned previously, it must be kept in mind that the sensitivity indicated by the cochlear potentials is mediated in the peripheral mechanism, before involvement of the central auditory nervous system. When the behavioral response is considered, however, the contribution made by the bat’s central auditory nervous system can be appreciated: the region of greatest auditory sensitivity, extending from 10,000 to 70,000 hertz, is the same region as the frequency of the echolocation cries and the one in which bats have the greatest need of acute hearing.
The failure of these bats to exhibit a behavioral response to tones below a frequency of 10,000 hertz can perhaps be explained also in relation to their peculiar use of hearing. This is a region of frequency that has little or no value for echolocation. More than that, it often contains noises of various kinds that, if heard, might be detrimental to this essential function. It has often been observed that bats are not easily disturbed by extraneous sounds of low frequencies, even extraordinarily intense ones. This peculiarity of hearing in bats may account for their resistance to masking sounds. The slight degree of structural differentiation found in the cochlea of bats may represent another aspect of the limitation of their hearing to that part of the sound spectrum most useful in echolocation. Therefore, it appears that the ear of the bat, which is a rather ordinary type of mammalian structure so far as level of auditory sensitivity and degree of tonal differentiation are concerned, has been developed for a particular purpose—namely, the reception of high-frequency sounds within a limited range.
