The Physics Of Superhuman Hearing...

[Spacescifi]

Anyone familiar with superheroes knows that some of them have the sense of superhuman hearing.

 

From a worldbuilding perspective, I am curious if the human body would allow for greater hearing ranges without modifying the shape of the outer ear?

How great of a hearing range could a humanoid have if the inner ear were modified?

[kerbiloid]

(Expecting the next photo of the "Quark" character).

***

The primates even can't move the ears. They have them just as a viewfinder for eyes.

[magnemoe]

11 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

(Expecting the next photo of the "Quark" character).

***

The primates even can't move the ears. They have them just as a viewfinder for eyes.

And that ears don't looks that good either, guess larger movable ears would work better. 
You could probably make the inner ear a bit better. 

Now you can buy smart ear protection who actually let you hear voices better than without them and you can get pretty good directional microphones. 

[kerbiloid]

Resonant cavities.

The brain should be moved down from the skull, like the Pierson's Puppeteers have.
The n the empty space can be used as a resonant cavity.

[KSK]

Which range - frequency or volume?

Anyway. 

The ear has three sections (as you probably already know): outer, middle and inner. The outer ear gathers sounds, the middle ear amplifies them and the inner ear transduces them into nerve impulses.

The outer ear is shaped (apparently) to be better at gathering sounds at frequencies around human voice frequencies but the range of human ear shapes suggests that it’s a relatively crude filter in that respect. If shape was essential to function then ear shapes would presumably be a lot more uniform. It’s also worth noting that some species (owls and other birds of prey for example) have ridiculously sensitive hearing but no visible ear structure to speak of.

I see no reason in principle why the human body couldn’t have a modified middle ear (better amplifier) or inner ear (better frequency response and more sensitive receiver). You would probably also want to engineer in whatever mechanism owls have that let them hear a mouse heartbeat at 20 metres without deafening themselves with their own calls.

Exactly how much one could improve human hearing without making visible changes to their ears, I have no idear.

 

Edited July 10, 2022 by KSK

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, KSK said:

Which range - frequency or volume?

Anyway. 

The ear has three sections (as you probably already know): outer, middle and inner. The outer ear gathers sounds, the middle ear amplifies them and the inner ear transduces them into nerve impulses.

The outer ear is shaped (apparently) to be better at gathering sounds at frequencies around human voice frequencies but the range of human ear shapes suggests that it’s a relatively crude filter in that respect. If shape was essential to function then ear shapes would presumably be a lot more uniform. It’s also worth noting that some species (owls and other birds of prey for example) have ridiculously sensitive hearing but no visible ear structure to speak of.

I see no reason in principle why the human body couldn’t have a modified middle ear (better amplifier) or inner ear (better frequency response and more sensitive receiver). You would probably also want to engineer in whatever mechanism owls have that let them hear a mouse heartbeat at 20 metres without deafening themselves with their own calls.

Exactly how much one could improve human hearing without making visible changes to their ears, I have no idear.

 

 

Hmm.... I guess the same hearing as the barn owl will suffice... being able to heartbeats several meters away could be useful.

Hearing sensitivity comparison of Barn Owls, Cats & Humans - As charted by M. Konishi, American Scientist Vol 61, 1973. Both the cat and the Barn Owl have much more sensitive hearing than the human in the range of about 0.5 to 10 kHz. The cat and Barn Owl have a similar sensitivity up to approximately 7 kHz. Beyond this point, the cat continues to be sensitive, but the Barn Owl's sensitivity declines sharply.

 

 

Yet with some owls (barn owls I think) their ears are asymetrically placed, so that they can home in on targets by calculating on the slight delay between the time it takes the sound to reach both ears.

 

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/how-can-an-owl-catch-a-mouse-underneath-a-foot-of-snow-in-total-darkness/

https://www.owlpages.com/owls/articles.php?a=6

 

 

[kerbiloid]

The advantage of a sapient species: no need in body modding for temporary needs.

Spoiler

 

[Nuke]

there are plenty of critters in the world that have better hearing than we do. 

the outer ear i believe evolved to maximize omnidirectional hearing.  useful if you are a primate living in a tree, where threats could come from any direction. a lot of the extra sensitivity that cats and some dogs have come from the big radar dish ears that can be pointed in different directions and can focus the sounds a lot better. its sort of like in radio if you want to use an omnidirectional antennae you get less range than a directional antennae. but with radio you can also amplify the signal.

the bones in the ear provide a form of mechanical amplification. these could be modified for more mechanical advantage and thus a higher gain. the cochlea can also be modified to have a higher density array of hairs. assuming all things are linear, and thats a big assumption, doubling the hairs and nerve receptors should double your gain. but evolution probibly already figured out the best density for survival and maybe we are at the limit of density where improving it might come with diminishing returns or tradeoffs. if you want to change the frequency response, then the cochlea geometry can be modified. make it bigger if you want more of the low end for example.  

so better hearing with inner ear mods only is possible. modifying the outer ear would also help and also give you an opportunity for cat girls. 

Edited July 10, 2022 by Nuke

[kerbiloid]

Btw. With catgirl ears and massive tails, the humans could communicate by tail drumming.

[Nuke]

11 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Btw. With catgirl ears and massive tails, the humans could communicate by tail drumming.

i figure a tail would come in handy in zero g. 

[Spacescifi]

50 minutes ago, Nuke said:

there are plenty of critters in the world that have better hearing than we do. 

the outer ear i believe evolved to maximize omnidirectional hearing.  useful if you are a primate living in a tree, where threats could come from any direction. a lot of the extra sensitivity that cats and some dogs have come from the big radar dish ears that can be pointed in different directions and can focus the sounds a lot better. its sort of like in radio if you want to use an omnidirectional antennae you get less range than a directional antennae. but with radio you can also amplify the signal.

the bones in the ear provide a form of mechanical amplification. these could be modified for more mechanical advantage and thus a higher gain. the cochlea can also be modified to have a higher density array of hairs. assuming all things are linear, and thats a big assumption, doubling the hairs and nerve receptors should double your gain. but evolution probibly already figured out the best density for survival and maybe we are at the limit of density where improving it might come with diminishing returns or tradeoffs. if you want to change the frequency response, then the cochlea geometry can be modified. make it bigger if you want more of the low end for example.  

so better hearing with inner ear mods only is possible. modifying the outer ear would also help and also give you an opportunity for cat girls. 

 

Haha! I remember those theads.

 

Yet here I was more focused on how a humanoid that looked nearly human for all intents (kryptonian or time lord) but with different inner organs may be able to pull off their special abilities.

Thanl you for your and other's answers.

 

The bones being modified to mechanically amplify sound would need to be able to de-amplify, otherwise such an alien humanoid race could go deaf or suffer hearing loss from a bunch of amplified sounds.

I think that is why outer ears are made of soft cartilage instead of hard bone? since bone conducts sound while soft stuff absorbs it more.

 

[Nuke]

38 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

 

Haha! I remember those theads.

 

Yet here I was more focused on how a humanoid that looked nearly human for all intents (kryptonian or time lord) but with different inner organs may be able to pull off their special abilities.

Thanl you for your and other's answers.

 

The bones being modified to mechanically amplify sound would need to be able to de-amplify, otherwise such an alien humanoid race could go deaf or suffer hearing loss from a bunch of amplified sounds.

I think that is why outer ears are made of soft cartilage instead of hard bone? since bone conducts sound while soft stuff absorbs it more.

 

i think the primary use of the bones is more to transfer energy from the ear drum to the working fluid in the cochlea. so if it does produce any gain its not that much. changing its geometry may also alter its resonant frequency and mess with all the harmonics. i think the biggest gain factor is in the sensory density of the cochlea. of course im using information gleaned from posters at the doctors office and some basic knowledge of audio circuits from my electronics hobby. its very interesting the solution that evolution found. it goes through a couple transduction steps and gets over the lack of amplification with higher sensitivity. i cant imagine either the bones or cochlea having much gain where as audio amplifiers can have a gain of 10 or more. the most interesting feature in the inner ear is the bio equivalent of a mems gyro. 

Edited July 10, 2022 by Nuke