Strictly speaking, they don't have better hearing. However, they can use their existing hearing better, and are able to discern more nuances.

In hearing tests, those born with vision loss and without vision loss we able to hear the same ranges of sound. But overall, those with vision loss can make more use of the sounds they do hear (ambient noises such as escalators, sound shadows, and even echolocation).

I'm not totally blind. I play a game with my kids where they toss a random coin onto the tiled kitchen floor and I guess what denomination the coin is, 5, 10 or 50 cents for example. I'm right 95% of the time and the kids are amazed, they consider it a super power of sorts.

It's not that my hearing is great or anything like that, rather, it's from years of practice of dropping coins and having to quickly decide if it's worth grovelling on the floor to find the dropped coin. I'm not grovelling for 5 cents but I might for 20 cents.

I explain this so called super power to people by saying I have a large catalogue of stored sounds, like a database that I can quickly refer to.

It applies to lots of sounds, such as cars, doors closing and other household noises.

Strange bumps in the night? My wife is like "what's that"? I can say right away "it's a cup falling in the dish rack" or whatever.

I would say yes, speaking from experience. People with a disability of the senses tend to force their other senses to pick up the slack, so a person that is blind may have better hearing than the average person, and a deaf person may have better vision. A deaf/blind person will usually have a very good sense of touch, they can feel the differences in texture and feel little bumps that almost no one else could feel.

No, we just pay more attention to what we ear.

I would say not, we just use it differently and become more attuned to our environments because we have to. This loss of one sight so all other senses become amplified I never took any stock in.

I guess part of it is that you get really efficient at using your ears. My brain also process sounds weirdly ie. I have synesthsia and certain sounds are painful. This a;so applies to using residual vision and other senses.

I’ve had low vision from birth and tbh I don’t think my hearing is any better than other people’s- but I find I can single out certain sounds better than others (e.g. I can hear cars clearer when crossing roads as I can focus on the sound and block out birds or whatever a little)
But this could just be something I’ve taught myself over the years

I wasn't born blind, but I have been VI for a number of years now. My hearing isn't "better", but I will say that you learn to utilize your hearing more and in different ways. The most notable example is when I'm at college and I encounter people I know, they often aren't accustomed to dealing with blind people, so they just say hi and don't say who they are. This took me a long time to deal with, and eventually you begin to really be able to discern people by their voices. Some people don't have as distinct voices so it's more difficult, but for the most part, that's what I noticed about hearing.

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