Re: High-frequency hearing in humans (=?ISO-8859-2?Q?Pawe=B3_Ku=B6mierek?= )


Subject: Re: High-frequency hearing in humans
From:    =?ISO-8859-2?Q?Pawe=B3_Ku=B6mierek?=  <pawel.kusmierek@xxxxxxxx>
Date:    Tue, 25 Jan 2011 10:42:52 -0500
List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>

--00248c0ef2f2992200049aad9328 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 10:34, John Culling <cullingj@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > My understanding is that high-frequency hearing is basically > a mammal thing. Even the vaunted auditory system of the > barn owl is limited to 10 kHz. The reason mammals developed > high frequency hearing is probably that they were small > and nocturnal and needed to hear where things were in > the dark with their small heads I think that the other reason why only mammals possess HF hearing may be that only the mammalian middle ear is capable of transducing them effectively thanks to having 3 ossicles insted of one. As for the role, Rickye Heffner and Henry Heffner made an argument that it's been primarily driven by the needs of localization. It was based on the correlation of HF hearing range with effective interaural distance (effective, i.e., taking the medium into accout; dolphins have small effective interaural distances). Pawel --00248c0ef2f2992200049aad9328 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable <br><br> <div class=3D"gmail_quote">On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 10:34, John Culling <spa= n dir=3D"ltr">&lt;<a href=3D"mailto:cullingj@xxxxxxxx">cullingj@xxxxxxxx= f.ac.uk</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br> <blockquote style=3D"BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex= ; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class=3D"gmail_quote">My understanding is that high-fr= equency hearing is basically<br>a mammal thing. Even the vaunted auditory s= ystem of the<br> barn owl is limited to 10 kHz. The reason mammals developed<br>high frequen= cy hearing is probably that they were small<br>and nocturnal and needed to = hear where things were in<br>the dark with their small heads</blockquote> <div>=A0</div> <div>I think that the other reason why only mammals possess HF hearing may = be that only the mammalian middle ear is capable of transducing them effect= ively thanks to having 3 ossicles insted of one.</div> <div>=A0</div> <div>As for the role, Rickye Heffner and Henry Heffner made an argument tha= t it&#39;s been primarily driven=A0by the needs of =A0localization. It was= =A0based on the correlation of HF hearing range with effective interaural d= istance (effective, i.e., taking the medium into accout; dolphins have smal= l effective interaural distances). </div> <div>=A0</div> <div>Pawel</div></div> --00248c0ef2f2992200049aad9328--


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