{"id":468833,"date":"2026-03-11T02:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T02:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/468833\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T02:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T02:34:08","slug":"secret-of-hedgehog-hearing-discovered-at-far-beyond-human-range","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/468833\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret of hedgehog hearing discovered at far beyond human range"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I wanted to investigate whether it would be possible to make targeted sound repellers for hedgehogs, because they are declining all over Europe. So we set out to measure the hearing of the European hedgehog for the first time, &#8221; says Rasmussen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Working with bio-acousticians who measure hearing in animals, she developed a soundtrack of pulses and beeps to play to anaesthetised hedgehogs from a rescue centre.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The researchers measured the animals&#8217; brain responses to pinpoint the frequency of sounds they could hear.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We discovered, to my great surprise and joy, that hedgehogs can hear up to 85kHz&#8221; Rasmussen said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Humans can hear up to 20kHz, and all sounds above that are called ultrasound. Cats hear up to 45kHz, while dogs&#8217; range extends to 65kHz.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After building a 3D model of a hedgehog&#8217;s ear, the scientists found it has a stiff chain of bones that allows high-pitched sounds to pass through efficiently, in a similar way to echolocating bats. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s amazing because this allows us to actually build targeted sound repellents that wouldn&#8217;t bother us or our pets,&#8221; she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;I wanted to investigate whether it would be possible to make targeted sound repellers for hedgehogs, because they&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-468833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}