22 July 2020

This morning I searched my blog for information on birdsong and was stopped in my tracks by a fascinating article: Male house mice (Mus musculus) sing to woo the ladies.

We don’t realize this because we can’t hear them. Mouse voices are way above our range of hearing but within the hearing range of cats (of course).

Mice sing at a shrill 50 kilohertz (kHz)—and our hearing tops out at just over 20 kHz. Mouse songs might be audible to cats, though, which can hear up to about 65 kHz.

— Audubon News: Animal Kingdom Idol: Birdsong vs. Mouse Song

Learn more and watch a male mouse sing in this 2015 article: Mr. Mouse Went A-Courting. (Duke University digitally lowered the audio frequency so we can hear the song.)

(photo from Wikimedia Commons; click on the caption to see the original)