Hey Scribespirare, thanks for sharing the cryptid-anatomy! I'd be up for reading that paper if it ever gets written/published.
I hadn't really thought about these differences before, but it's an interesting topic. Though, I guess depending on the 'werewolf type' these elements might still differ? As in depending on the piece of media you're working with and how "wolf-like" these werewolves are in comparison to humans.... I do wonder about your potential categorisations. This got me to think a bit about the different depictions of werewolves (and their abilities) throughout the years, so thanks! All the best
nonnie I need you to know that I've been thinking about this ask all damn day. i'm staying up past my bedtime rn just to indulge in some speculative cryptobiology hearing science so lets fucking go
First, I have in fact come up with a categorization that runs off the same principle as the categorization of pinnae in dogs (pinna is the external portion of the ear). In dogs you have erect, semi-erect, and dropped. For werewolves I'd use the categories of human, pointed, shifted, and wolf, though I might actually prefer to call the categorizes 'stages' since they're often transient and can be moved between, depending on the fictional source. No werewolf lore that I'm familiar with has a stipulation that a were's hearing is only enhanced when they're in full wolf form, so we're working off the assumption here that a difference in pinnae shape is the primary reason for differing hearing abilities between the stages. And that a werewolf's base hearing level is above that of a human due to differences in the inner and middle ears.
With human-shaped pinnae, a werewolf's malleus would be larger than a human's, and their cochlea would have an extra turn. A larger malleus (the ossicle connected to the tympanum) in dogs is speculated to increase leverage in the ossicle chain and thus magnify the energy of sound waves. So even with plain old round human shaped pinnae, a werewolf would be able to pick up nearby sounds more clearly than a human could. Without the added surface area and amplification of larger, more specially shaped pinnae though, they would not be able to hear at greater distances than humans in this form. The extra turn in the cochlea does mean they'd be able to pick up pitches undetectable to human ears though. There's a lot of science I could throw behind an explanation of how the cochlea works but think of it like a piano. Specific sound waves press specific keys as that wave moves through our ear. A dog's cochlea is almost a third longer than a human's, so they have an extra long piano with even more keys that can be triggered, hence they can hear frequencies that we cannot. If that makes sense lmao.
All of that is to say that in a human form, werewolves can hear more sharply and hear a wider variety of pitches, but not at a greater distance.
The other categories or phases are fairly self explanatory from there as the differences between them are only pinnae and ear canal shape. The pointed stage is for a human shaped skull with pointy, elf-like pinnae. Sometimes they're a little furry, sometimes not. The shifted stage is probably the least common as I can't name any media off the top of my head that isn't anime that uses it, but basically full on wolf or dog ears on a human head. Then finally the wolf stage is for a straight up wolf head, either on an actual wolf body, or on a more monstrous Van Helsing type body. As the pinnae get larger and more mobile, a werewolf's ability to hear at greater distances and localize sounds gets stronger and stronger. Additionally, the final wolf stage also has L-shaped ear canals that the other stages lack since the skull is wolf like instead of human. I don't actually know how deeply that would effect the hearing ability though, the research paper I read for most of this didn't touch on it.
Aaaaand that's all I got I think. I'd love to go into more detail about how pinnae shape and size would effect hearing, but according to that research paper (which is from 2020) we apparently don't have any data on that kind of thing in dogs. Can you believe that? We don't know exactly how ear size and shape effects a dog's hearing. Nobody has tested that empirically. fucking wild
