1. A History of Discoveries on Animal Hearing: An Overview- Arthur N. Popper, Darlene R. Ketten, and Allison B. Coffin -- 2. Insect Hearing: Selected Historical Vignettes - Ronald Hoy -- 3. Evolution of the Understanding of Fish Hearing - Olav Sand, Arthur N. Popper, and Anthony D. Hawkins -- 4. A Nasty, Brutish, and Short History of Amphibian Bioacoustics - Peter M. Narins, H. Carl Gerhardt, and Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard -- 5. The History of Auditory Research in Lizards - Geoff A. Manley -- 6. Birds as a Model in Hearing Research - Robert J. Dooling and Georg M. Klump -- 7. Discoveries in Marine Mammal Hearing - Douglas Wartzok and Darlene R. Ketten -- 8. Development of Models for Bat Echolocation - James A. Simmons and Andrea Megela Simmons -- 9. Central Auditory Processing in the Mammalian System - Yi Zhou and H. Steven Colburn.

This volume focuses on the history of research on hearing from comparative approaches. Each chapter examines the most formative studies that led to current understanding of hearing across taxa and still influence hearing research in general. Much of the earlier work describes research approaches and results fundamental to our understanding of hearing as well as the beauty of observation and synthesis. The pioneering work on hearing contains ideas and questions that are still germane today. Thus, the goal of this volume is to introduce, review, and put into perspective, older but exemplary, extraordinary studies by investigators that form the basis of our knowledge as well as questions being asked today.