Auditory sensitivity of the albino rat.

The auditory sensitivity of the (Sprague-Dawley strain) albino rat was determined by the conditioned suppression technique. The three animals tested were found to have a range of hearing from 250 Hz to 80 kHz at 70 dB (SPL). They were most sensitive to tones of 8 kHz but were almost as sensitive at 38 kHz. In contrast to previously published data, there was no evidence for a highly specialized tuning of the audiogram to tones in the 30-40 kHz region. In general, the audiogram of this strain of albino rat is quite typical of mammals of the same size and, furthermore, closely approximates the mammalian mean in most essential features.