Research overview: feline sensitivity to ultrasonic rodent calls

Mice and other rodents produce vocalizations and movement sounds that extend into ultrasonic frequencies inaudible to humans, and cats are well equipped to hear them. This overview surveys how the cat's broad hearing range, reaching far above the human ceiling, lets it detect the high-frequency components of rodent calls and rustling. For a specialist predator of small mammals, this ultrasonic sensitivity is a direct hunting advantage, allowing detection and localization of prey that betray themselves with sounds people cannot perceive. The survey relates this capability to the cat's audiogram and to the acoustic ecology of its prey. It frames feline high-frequency hearing as a co-adaptation to the signals rodents emit. Understanding this match between predator hearing and prey sound illuminates why cats orient sharply to faint high-pitched noises and how their auditory system is tuned to the soundscape of the hunt.