Dog killed by ultrasound - truth or myth?

Hi.

Please don't laugh at my question. I've heard a lot of urban legends and amazing stories about this case, so I'd like to ask you electronics experts what it really is like.

In my school (high school) a story has been circulating for years that someone has an emitter of sounds inaudible to the human ear, which causes dogs to go crazy and die. Apparently, it can act on them even from a distance of several dozen meters.

Is it physically possible? I read that human hearing range is 16-20 KHz and dog hearing range is 15-30 KHz. So if you play a mix of sounds on the frequency of 23-26 KHz, people will not hear it and dogs will. If the sound is intense enough (e.g. broadcast with appropriate amplification by a directional emitter), the dogs in the area of effect will start to go berserk.

On the other hand, I have read that a frequency such as 15-30KHz hardly passes through obstacles, e.g. walls in block buildings, so there is no chance that such a device will work effectively, e.g. at 30 meters. Besides, will a dog, even when exposed to such sounds, go crazy? I don't think so - he bark, he blows and it will go away. Certainly he will not die, or even less "commit suicide" :)

However, the people who tell the story swear that they themselves have seen such dogs go crazy after allegedly being exposed to such sounds from this device.

I would very much like to ask experts to comment on this issue from the point of view of audio-electronics and acoustics. I would like to write for the school newsletter and deal scientifically with this popular rumor that seems to me to be basically false and even theoretically impossible.

Thank you in advance for your help,
Andrzej Ciekawicz

You answered the question yourself. Ultrasound can irritate dogs but will not kill them.

As a curiosity - a long time ago a colleague from Germany brought a TV with an ultrasonic remote control from the display.
After tuning to our audio system, he installed it at home and enjoyed great equipment (well, these were the times, in our country then the color TV was not so popular), until he noticed with horror that when he was controlling the remote control, the dog started to howl and the cat almost crashes door in panic ...
Frightened, he threw the remote control into the garbage can, because if the animals react like this, there must be a threat to people as well
V.

You probably understood "the human hearing range is 16-20kHz" as 16kHz - 20kHz and not 16Hz - 20kHz?

rzymo wrote:

You probably understood "the human hearing range is 16-20kHz" as 16kHz - 20kHz and not 16Hz - 20kHz?

Yes of course. I made a mistake in noting the range. Sorry.
I would also like to thank everyone for their unambiguous suggestions. It is impossible. On the other hand, admit that it's surprising what things people can believe and how amazing stories can become popular. ;)

Regards.

farrix wrote:

... I can hear 30Hz without a problem, these are very pleasant sounds ...

Prefer to listen to a sine wave, or maybe a saw or a rectangle

In fact, long-term exposure to such factors can lead to the death of an animal.
I saw the video of the experiment on the cat:
> in the first phase it was nice the kitten got food and was stroked
> in the second, he also got a meal, but also a stress factor (probably a gust of air) which, however, did not interfere with his life. After some time the kitten became depressed and its fur started to fall out.

karol_85 wrote:

This topic interests me even more, because I have already chosen the topic of my thesis: "Microprocessor emitter of ultrasonic signals" and precisely in terms of deterring unwanted animals (dangerous dogs, rodents or birds).

You have chosen an interesting topic of work. Congratulations.

karol_85 wrote:

The effective distance of such devices depends on their power, I do not know what power devices are available on the market, uncle google will help you. And put among the books the stories you have heard about dying dogs, because this is a good topic, but for fairy-tale writers and for newspapers like "Fakt".

Hehe, I can not imagine that someone would sell the device openly with the description "you will quickly and discreetly eliminate the annoying neighbor's dog" I was skeptical about the whole thing from the beginning, but I don't regret asking the question here because there were a lot of really interesting statements. On the other hand ...

dj-MatyAS wrote:

If the animal is sensitive to it or, God forbid, "heart-shaped" - it can kick out the excess of emotions ...

Well, it is theoretically possible, but the nonsense of filming the legend that electronics do it on a mass scale. At the same time, it is hard to imagine that a 2-3 hour long emission of such a sound, although inaudible to the human ear, would go unnoticed in the block. Some "air vibrations", "humming" etc. would be registered by someone for sure. Apparently, children, including babies, also hear in greater ranges than adults, so a good chance that they would let you know that something is wrong.

And I wrote about dogs and you gave an example with a kitten, I don't know about cats' hearing, but probably more or less the same ...

Once again, thanks, gentlemen, for the interesting comments.

AVE ...

Ultrasound can kill an animal. It's simple: you turn on your 300W tweeter, and the pet terrified by the ultrasonic noise runs blindly and smashes its head on the door ...

The second option is to put the poor creature into a resonance chamber tuned to 30-100kHz and give it a signal from a powerful amplifier. Rather, he will not survive this ...

When it comes to acoustics, infrasound affects humans much more than ultrasounds ...

karol_85 wrote:

The animal, when he hears them, runs away, frightened, even as if it feels pain, the more it is (defensive reaction).

My friend has such a deterrent. A very handy thing to do when you ride a bike in the woods. I have not personally seen how it works, but my friend said that he had to use it a few times and some dogs can barely tell that they can hear something, but some of them fall on the ground and curl up as if someone was pouring boiling water over them. Whether you can kill it, I do not know, but I suspect that there may be an extremely sensitive dog who will even get a heart attack when he hears it :P

karol_85 wrote:

This topic interests me even more, because I have already chosen the topic of my thesis: "Microprocessor emitter of ultrasonic signals"

Hope the "emitter" is some typo made while writing the post.

I have a dog. German Shepherd. Going for walks with him, he is often attacked by small mongrels. As you know, I can't let him chew them, because the owner's crying would reach heaven. I bought a DAZER ultrasonic repeller. It says that dogs react from 20 feet (7 meters) away. And what? And nothing. Very rarely any dog shows a reaction to such a "whistle". And even if it is only 1-2 times. Later he has it in .... I'm thinking of buying an air rifle gun.

Once, I was about to prepare a topic about sounds in nature for physics and I found on the Internet that a pet was tested for infrasound at 160dB and died of a lung congestion. Maybe not about ultrasound, but I think this information is useful .
As for the ultrasound, read on the internet "Moscow's eye"

DynamikS wrote:

As for the ultrasound, read on the internet "Moscow's eye"

In my humble opinion it has absolutely nothing to do with ultrasounds or any other sounds, and with this post you are only making confusion ...

Or maybe this rumor is about a brown sound that makes people puke

pawelr98 wrote:

Or maybe this rumor is about a brown sound that makes people puke

However, they probably want something else

Hucul wrote:

pawelr98 wrote:

Or maybe this rumor is about a brown sound that makes people puke

However, they probably want something else

Mythbusters tried, it failed:

Brown Note:


Each bothersome factor can be harmful in the long run.
Another thing is that ultrasound is very directional,
and they are quite well absorbed by various building materials (e.g. polystyrene).

There are sonic weapons that actually make you vomit
a wave of sounds (works more or less like an open internal combustion engine)

Dogs pay attention to the ultrasonic motion sensors (about 40Khz) that are turned on.

Quote:

Mythbusters tried, it failed: <

Only that there are several versions of the extent to which the srayton band is present. The Conquerors tried infrasound, but the 26kHz range is still to be checked. Supposedly in Brainiac they checked it but ... this is Brainiac, and you should not believe it ...

This is infrasound, such a little attention.

DynamikS wrote:

This is infrasound, such a little attention.

26 k hz is infrasound !?

DVDM14 wrote:

DynamikS wrote:

This is infrasound, such a little attention.

26 k hz is infrasound !?

DynamikS probably meant puke.

Ultrasound is certainly not produced with 18 "loudspeakers in BR cabinets, and at 26kHz the diaphragm does not swing so that the human eye can see it.

AVE ...

Such large speakers would have problems above 10kHz. Piezoelectric loudspeakers are used for ultrasound. Subwoofers are used for infrasound ...
14.8Hz is one of the known infrasound that acts on humans. It causes a strong feeling of anxiety, sometimes the feeling of being watched or someone / something being in the room where the sound occurs.
The brown note is supposed to be laxative, but it doesn't work. There are groups of infrasound that can cause nausea, changes in blood pressure, vomiting and even loss of consciousness. But at an intensity well over 140dB. Infrasonic weapons using the controlled ignition of a mixture of fuel and air in an open chamber had one serious side effect: if the target was too close, it lost its ear drums. The air pressure jumped too rapidly ...

As for ultrasound, different dogs and cats of different ages and breeds have a greater or lesser range of hearing. Old dogs may not hear the ultrasound. In turn, puppies and small kittens can hear up to 40-60kHz, as long as I am not confused by the sclerosis. About two weeks ago there was a topic about strange noises and one of the users mentioned that his cat was probably just reacting to the sound of the TV's impulse converter, which works in the 25-100kHz range in a typical application ...

Quote:

Ultrasound is certainly not produced with 18 "loudspeakers in BR cabinets, and at 26kHz the diaphragm does not swing so that the human eye can see it.

Learn to read with understanding, they checked in Pogromce infrasound , and there are rumors that srayton is on the band ultrasound which they did not check in the episode ...

It was in the movie "job or the last gray cell"

Quote:

It was in the movie "job or the last gray cell"

What was ?
a brown note, or a dog killed by ultrasound.

I used to watch this movie but on discovery and the members of the crew said that they felt bad and Adam didn't feel anything because he was in the center. Others, on the other hand, felt nauseous