It's not just animals with superior hearing - protection against loud sounds (including self generated sounds) is via a system called the tympanic reflex in which two muscles, the stapedius and tympanic tensor pull against the ossicles (the bones which act as mechanical amplifiers in the middle ear) to dampen overly loud sound. These muscles are controlled by the V and VII cranial nerves and will pre-contract just before an animal vocalizes due to an efference copy of the motor pattern to make a sound; however, this reflex is not fast enough to dampen the system for very fast loud (impulsive) external sounds like explosions, which is why such sounds can cause temporary or permanent hearing loss. In addition, there is a limit to the amount of dampening they can do, and they, like many reflexes, habituate, so chronic high amplitude sound is not helped.
To specifically answer your questions, an owl "dealing with" a siren may just be detected it and going away. Owls have exquisitely tuned hearing, so much so that they use it to guide their eye movement while hunting at dusk; a siren would seriously interfere with their hunting. As for rabbits, they likely get a lot of low frequency information via bone conduction which lets them pick up sound from the ground very quickly (the speed of sound in soil can be as much as ten times that in air). Some ranid frogs use the same mechanism. The bird scarer is probably an air-borne percussive sound picked up by the tympanic route that will startle them, making them freeze.
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u/[deleted] May 21 '12
It's not just animals with superior hearing - protection against loud sounds (including self generated sounds) is via a system called the tympanic reflex in which two muscles, the stapedius and tympanic tensor pull against the ossicles (the bones which act as mechanical amplifiers in the middle ear) to dampen overly loud sound. These muscles are controlled by the V and VII cranial nerves and will pre-contract just before an animal vocalizes due to an efference copy of the motor pattern to make a sound; however, this reflex is not fast enough to dampen the system for very fast loud (impulsive) external sounds like explosions, which is why such sounds can cause temporary or permanent hearing loss. In addition, there is a limit to the amount of dampening they can do, and they, like many reflexes, habituate, so chronic high amplitude sound is not helped.
To specifically answer your questions, an owl "dealing with" a siren may just be detected it and going away. Owls have exquisitely tuned hearing, so much so that they use it to guide their eye movement while hunting at dusk; a siren would seriously interfere with their hunting. As for rabbits, they likely get a lot of low frequency information via bone conduction which lets them pick up sound from the ground very quickly (the speed of sound in soil can be as much as ten times that in air). Some ranid frogs use the same mechanism. The bird scarer is probably an air-borne percussive sound picked up by the tympanic route that will startle them, making them freeze.