Abstract
The comparative study of mammals reveals systematic differences in their hearing abilities. First, the ability to hear above 10 kHz (which apparently evolved for using pinna cues to localize sound) varies inversely with the size of an animal’s head such that smaller animals usually have better high-frequency hearing than larger ones. Second, low-frequency hearing ability is bimodally distributed: Although most mammals can hear below 125 Hz, about one third do not hear much below 500 Hz and probably do not use temporal coding for pitch perception. Third, sound localization acuity varies directly with the width of the field of best vision, indicating that a major source of evolutionary pressure on hearing is to direct the eyes to the source of a sound. Finally, while some mammals do not use the binaural time-difference locus cue and a few others do not use the binaural intensity difference cue, it is likely that all mammals that possess pinnae use pinna locus cues to localize sound. Taken together, these findings suggest that some of the hearing abilities of extinct mammals may be inferred from fossil evidence bearing on their head size, eyes, and the presence of pinnae.
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