About 16 years ago, Ralph Harvey, an anesthesiology professor at the University of Tennessee's College of Veterinary Medicine, walked into an examination room where a small, white poodle sat atop an examination table. He noticed a high-pitched squeal resembling the sound that a capacitor in a camera flash makes when it's first turned on. Harvey traced it to the dog's ears. "It was truly phenomenal. I could use my stethoscope and listen to it quite clearly." The dog's ears were singing at 45.5 decibels (which is somewhere between a whisper and normal conversation) and around 9,500 Hz (J Am Vet Med Assoc, 198:1017-8, 1991).
The phenomenon appears to be related to a process essential for normal mammalian hearing, called cochlear amplification, says Jim Hudspeth at Rockefeller University. Walking downstairs from his office to his laboratory, Hudspeth remarks that his labs have always been in one basement or another. "At least ...
