Human hearing spans 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz — sorted by a snail-shaped organ
A fluid-filled spiral the size of a pea separates a bass rumble from a high whistle, one frequency at a time.
Healthy young ears respond to sound across a range of about 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz — from the lowest rumble you can feel to a whistle near the top of human perception. Britannica puts it plainly: “Between 20 hertz and 20 kilohertz lies the frequency range of hearing for humans.”
The sorting is done in the cochlea, a fluid-filled, snail-shaped coil in the inner ear lined with thousands of hair cells. When sound vibrations ripple through the fluid, microscopic projections on these cells bend, opening channels that fire off an electrical signal to the brain.
Crucially, the cochlea is laid out by pitch. Hair cells near its wide base respond to high-pitched sounds, while those deeper toward the centre pick up low-pitched ones — a built-in frequency map.
Those base hair cells are also the most fragile. They do not regrow, so age and loud noise tend to erode the high frequencies first.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
