Human hearing diverged from other mammals mainly via speech analysis

Evidence

The purpose of hearing is to capture acoustic vibrations arriving at the ear and analyse the content of the signal to deliver information about the acoustic surroundings to the higher levels in the brain. The auditory system is the sensory system for the sense of hearing. According to current knowledge, the auditory system divides broadband ear-canal signals into frequency bands, and then conducts a sophisticated analysis on the bands in parallel and in sequence. The human auditory system largely resembles the hearing system in other mammals, but humans have one property that has developed much farther: the ability to analyse and recognize spoken language. As a consequence, the sensitivity to and resolution of some speechand voice-related features of sound are very good. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 716

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader acoustic communication theme of the book; the mammal-to-human speech specialization frame echoes comparative biology discussions of auditory specializations. — connects to: Human hearing evolved to decode natural sounds beyond speech or music — Gordon Hempton, John Grossmann, One Square Inch of Silence- One Man’s…, 23; The auditory cortex decodes speech from acoustically jumbled waveforms.; Speech discrimination requires five distinct auditory features — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 1868
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 716

Broader Connections

• Human hearing evolved to decode natural sounds beyond speech or music #complicates (0.85) — Gordon Hempton, John Grossmann, One Square Inch of Silence- One Man’s…, 23
• The auditory cortex decodes speech from acoustically jumbled waveforms. #expands (0.85)
• Speech discrimination requires five distinct auditory features #expands (0.75) — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 1868