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(contemporary music)

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Any one fascinated by the natural world

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has probably wondered why some animals

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have such strange looking sense organs.

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The elephant with its huge ears,

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the antennae of a butterfly,

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which up close look like feathers,

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the snake when its split tongue.

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And what about less obvious enhancements

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like the sensory cells on a crocodile's skin?

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Surely these evolutionary traits aren't just for decoration.

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In fact, the size, shape and location

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of these animal sense organs is all for a purpose,

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and just like us, animals rely on their senses

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to communicate with each other,

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find their way around, stay safe,

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and most importantly, to find food.

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When you see how superior some animal senses are

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compared to those of humans,

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you might wonder how we ever managed

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to stay on top of the food chain.

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Animal Super Senses.

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You won't believe what's possible.

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(soft music)

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(contemporary music)

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Welcome to Animal Super Senses,

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the show that enables you to see it, hear it, taste it,

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smell it, and feel it like animals do.

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(contemporary music)

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Animals use sight, smell, taste, touch,

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hearing, and other special senses, to negotiate their way

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through a sometimes cruel and unforgiving world.

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(contemporary music)

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On this episode, we travel from the desert to the forest,

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Australia to Borneo and back,

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to learn how species as diverse as bat-eared foxes,

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the bilby, deer, kangaroo rats, cicadas,

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proboscis monkeys, and other creatures,

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never miss an auditory trick.

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(contemporary music)

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In these huge expanses of shrubland, grazed and fought over

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by some of the most recognizable wildlife on the planet,

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we find this particularly curious critter.

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The bat-eared fox makes its home in areas

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with short grass and low scrub,

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feeding on mostly insects and invertebrates.

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(soft music)

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To get a hold of creatures that small,

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it helps to be able to hear them,

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so the large ears of the bat-eared fox

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aren't just for decoration.

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They're filled with blood vessels

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which help cool the animal down during the day,

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just as well, because it gets hot out here on the savanna.

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(soft music)

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But their ears are also an effective sound gatherer,

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funneling sound to the inner ear.

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What's more, these swiveling ears can turn 180 degrees

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to help locate their tiny prey,

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as well as the animals that prey on them.

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(suspenseful music)

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Bat-eared foxes have to be especially alert

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to the sounds of the slender mongoose, brown hyena,

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and black-backed jackals,

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all of which can kill and eat bat-eared foxes

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at regular intervals.

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(suspenseful music)

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Good hearing in general is a huge advantage

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for animals who would rather avoid being eaten.

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The desert offers lean pickings for omnivores,

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with sparse vegetation, meaning fewer places to hide.

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(contemporary music)

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The bilby seems to spend most of its time

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avoiding being eaten.

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(contemporary music)

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A marsupial, in fact, the largest known member

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of the bandicoot family,

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the bilby is truly a nocturnal animal.

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(contemporary music)

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They usually don't come out of the ground

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until long after dusk

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and head back an hour or two before sunrise.

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If it's a full moon or there's heavy wind or rain,

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bilbies will stay cooped up in their burrows all night.

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(contemporary music)

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When they do get out amongst it,

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they rely on their hearing to survive.

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(contemporary music)

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Notice their large, mostly hairless ears,

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which allows sound to past unheeded to the inner ear

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and also helps to amplify sound.

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In fact, it's not unlike the effect

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of cupping your hands behind your ears.

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But of course, there's a lot more

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to animal's super sense of hearing

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than having outsized ears.

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Take banner-tailed rats, for example.

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Their hearing is so keen that they can hear

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wind ruffling the feathers of an owl

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flying through the forest at night.

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Yet, unlike the bat-eared foxes we saw earlier,

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the ears of the banner-tailed rat, aren't particularly large

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in proportion to the rest of their body.

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It's the large feet and hind legs

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that stand out on this animal.

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(suspenseful music)

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No, with the banner-tailed rat,

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all the precise audio engineering work

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goes on inside the creatures ears.

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(suspenseful music)

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Banner-tailed rats have a huge eardrum

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beating away inside that medium-sized ear

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and a larger than usual middle ear chamber to boot.

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(suspenseful music)

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Large bony structures surrounding

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the banner-tailed rat's inner ear

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enhance their extremely sensitive hearing.

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(suspenseful music)

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Size is no guarantee

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when it comes to animal sensory strength.

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Some of the smallest animals have the largest powers

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of hearing and auditory communication.

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(soft music)
(rushing water)

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(soft music)

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Though their habitat is different,

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deer are another animal who rely on their sense of hearing

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to stay out of the way of trouble.

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(soft music)

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You'll note that they too have large pinnae ears

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which move independently.

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This directional hearing

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means they can zone in on where a sound is coming,

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and it is believed from how far away,

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meaning how fast they'd better run to get away from it.

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(soft music)

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This, in large measure, is why it is so hard

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to sneak up on a deer in the woods.

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(soft music)

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And as all those deer hunters out there

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could possibly attest, deers instinctively distinguished

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between the sounds it hears every day in the forest

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and unfamiliar noises such as the opening of a car door

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or human footsteps.

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(soft music)

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In some respects, hearing is the most important

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of deer senses, for though their sense of smell is acute,

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an ill wind can always blow outdoors

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in an unhelpful direction,

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whereas they can rely better on their ears to guide them.

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(soft music)

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Deers also hear things at a higher frequency than humans,

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though we can pick up on things

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lower in the spectrum than they can.

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(soft music)

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Rodents, such as the lowly rat and humble mouse,

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come with the gift of ultrasonic hearing

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as standard equipment.

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That means they can hear in a frequency

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above the human ear's audibility limit.

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(high-pitched sounds)

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The hearing range most often means

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the range of sound waves and vibrations

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which can be heard by humans and other animals.

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(piano music)

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The easiest way might be to imagine a piano keyboard.

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Humans typically hear notes in the middle of the keyboard.

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Others very high or very low are inaudible to us.

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(piano music)

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At the lower end of the scale,

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rats and mice and other rodents

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don't just make the squeaky noises

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we humans are able to pick up on.

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Oh no, they are able to communicate

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in a whole rich world of sound and auditory cues

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but outside of our range of hearing.

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(suspenseful music)

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Imagine what it might be like if we could hear it.

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(suspenseful music)

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(contemporary music)

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Larger animals that are able to hear things

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in the infrasonic range tend to have large heads,

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as in larger than human,

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and have fair-sized ears set wide apart.

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There's perhaps no better example than the elephant.

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Of course, elephant ears are notable

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for a variety of reasons.

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(contemporary music)

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For one thing, they can move their ears back and forth

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which helps cool them down.

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(contemporary music)

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They contain a network of blood vessels

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which help to regulate the elephant's temperature,

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circulating blood through its ears.

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Elephants can hear things at 20 frequencies lower

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on the hearing range than we can,

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in the range known as infrasound.

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(deep rumbling)

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That low rumbling sound you sometimes hear elephants make,

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that's the thin edge of the wedge.

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Other elephants can pick up on such rumblings

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and others we cannot detect, as far as six kilometers away.

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These long distance conversations are useful

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in letting male elephants know when females are around

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and if they're in heat.

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Mating season and this rumble of the jungle

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is no joke for elephants.

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It's only for a few days out of every two to four years

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that females are ready to mate,

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and that's when they send out this mating call.

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It's the call that no bull elephant wants to miss.

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As well as those gigantic flapping ears,

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elephants can detect sounds

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through their trunks and their feet.

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Both come with receptors

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that pick up on those low frequency vibrations

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in the infrasound spectrum.

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When you see an elephant with their trunk on the ground

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and their feet carefully positioned,

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it means they're having a good old listen.

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They could be tuning into the subsonic rumblings

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made by other elephants

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or listening out for thunderstorms and the approach of rain.

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(soft music)

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In the dry season on the African plain,

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this is a huge advantage, as they can move towards the rain

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and towards water, which is vital for survival.

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(birds chirping)

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The large ears of bat-eared foxes and elephants

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give them their ability to amplify sound.

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But there's one rather singular animal

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who uses another part of its body to amplify sound.

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Because it's important to hear what's going on,

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communicating your message can be a matter

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of life and death.

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To make our case in point,

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we travel to the world's third largest island,

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one whose very name has become a synonym

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for the wild side of nature,

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Borneo, home of the proboscis monkey.

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This primate, found exclusively in the wilds of Borneo,

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has many unusual characteristics.

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One of the largest and most distinctive of all primates,

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they have partially web feet and make fine swimmers.

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And it's the male of the species

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who develops the largest nose.

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(soft music)

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(suspenseful music)

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But it's protruding nose is also an aid

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in spreading the alarm when danger is near.

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When feeling threatened,

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the male proboscis monkey's nose swells up,

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and this swelling means his nose acts as a sound chamber.

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The monkey's call of anguish or alarm

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echoes off those chamber walls.

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(proboscis monkey calls out)

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Its cries traveled further, hopefully reaching females

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and warning them of impending danger.

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Most often crocodiles or clouded leopards,

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or sometimes, sad to say, humans.

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The proboscis monkey is on the endangered species list.

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From a nose that works as an amplifier,

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to an up close examination of creatures in the insect world

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whose sense of hearing originates in some odd places.

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Cicadas and grasshoppers carry their ears on their abdomens.

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While crickets and katydids hear through holes

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in their hind legs.

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Their reason for being there?

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Well, sound detection generally works better

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when the detectors, the ears, are set far apart.

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Crickets, and katydids certainly need

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their sensitive auditory system.

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As most of us know from experience, the leaf-like insect

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has a proclivity for making a lot of noise,

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especially on warm summer nights.

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It's critical for survival to discriminate

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between the sounds of a receptive mates singing right back,

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and the sound of a bat

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whose calls may be in the same frequency.

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Striking a bum note in this case

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could be a matter of life and death.

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Especially when you consider the animal

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which crickets and cicadas have most reason to fear,

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the bat, and its super sense of echolocation.

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Bats, of the kind the cricket and cicada

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need to listen out for,

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rely on echolocation, which in simple terms,

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is like seeing through sound.

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It's an interesting fact that bat species

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use echolocation all the time.

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Bats are generally nocturnal

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and catch their prey while in mid-flight.

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Echolocation enables them to decode

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thousands of sound signals.

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These sound signals bounce back from a tree's leaves,

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branches and trunk, to build a sound picture

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of their surroundings.

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Echolocation helps bats to find their preferred food types,

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insects such as crickets and cicadas.

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But the really neat thing about echolocation

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is that it also enables bats not just to hear a sound

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but to really make a noise.

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Bats generate ultrasound waves through their larynx

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and emit sounds through their open mouth or nose.

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Fascinating in recent research

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has shown that, quite conclusively,

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bat males sing in ultrasound to attract females.

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What the research seems to prove

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is that female bats are more attracted to those male bats

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whose mating calls are more elaborate.

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Even stranger and more revealing

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is the fact that both male and female bats sing in secret,

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at a frequency perhaps few,

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if any, creatures of their environment can hear.

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It's almost as Bram Stoker put in Dracula,

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"The children of the night.

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What sweet music they make."

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The forest at night.

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Aside from the sound of a bird tweeting,

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wind blowing, or the crackling of twigs,

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seems to us a pretty quiet place

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but with the right kind of ears,

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it is a cacophony of sounds.

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Somewhere in the midst of that primeval dark,

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an owl flies, almost noiselessly, through the night air.

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Silent, but violent, the barn owl as depicted here,

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is reckoned by some as the most widespread

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bird species on earth.

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Sharp eyesight and the fact that they fly

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almost silently through the air,

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have a lot to do with their prolific success has predators.

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But maybe the real stealth weapon in the owl's arsenal

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is they're super sense of subsonic hearing.

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You won't hear an owl coming,

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unless they issue their signature call,

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but they will most certainly hear you.

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Owl ears are also asymmetrical,

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which is to say, the left ear is not level with the right.

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As with all smart evolutionary design,

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there's a good reason for this.

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Asymmetrical ears give them the direction of sound,

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the difference in time it takes

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for a sound to reach the right or left ear.

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Put it this way: owls can hear a rodent

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moving under several feet of snow from 50 feet away.

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When you think of it that way,

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the poor little critters just don't stand a chance.

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On Animals Super Senses, we see it, hear it, taste it,

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smell it, and feel it like animals do.

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The senses are the star of the show

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and this episode has been no exception.

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The sense of hearing has taken us on a memorable journey,

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but these incredible powers of perception

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will fight again another day,

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so join us next time on Animal Super Senses.

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{\an8}(contemporary music)