It's been a while since I posted a cool animal oddity _
Well, here is one I found about a couple days ago!
Meet the world's loudest bird, the white bellbird! Btw, maybe you want to turn down your volume a bit down :)
Scientifically described as Procnias albus, the white bellbird is a species of bird in the family Cotingidae and holds the record for the world’s loudest bird, with vocalizations of up to 125.4 decibels!!
Here are some points of reference to give you an idea how loud that is:
100 – 120 decibels: For example, a bulldozer, impact wrench, or motorcycle.
120 – 140 decibels: Such as, a rock concert, auto racing, or a hammer pounding a nail.
125 – 155 decibels: Like, firecrackers or fireworks, or a jet engine. source
Dunno about you, I also love how mechanical-like it sounds, definitely not something you would expect from a bird 😂
The species occurs in forests in the Guianas, with small numbers in Venezuela and the Brazilian state of Pará, as well as Trinidad and Tobago and Panama.
What is imo really interesting is how these extremely loud mating calls were often produced in really close proximity of potential female mates. Imagine yelling to a woman like crazy hoping to get her wet 😂
We find that song amplitude in bellbirds is context-dependent: when a female was on the display perch, a male bellbird sang only his louder song type, swiveling his body mid-song to face the female head on. We know of no other species in which such high-amplitude vocal signals are directed to receivers in such close proximity. source
The reasons behind this behavior is still unknown and really mysterious considering how it can potentially be dangerous for the females
It is curious that one of the world’s loudest birds sings only its highest-amplitude song type in such close-range communication
It is also unclear why female white bellbirds willingly stay so close to males as they sing. At four meters, females would experience potentially damaging effective dB values at the ear, of ∼104 dB(A) Leq and ∼113 dB(A) Lpeak. Presumably these risks are offset by benefits females gain in assessing prospective mates source
Weird behavior, hopefully one day we will know more about it!
Anyways, cool little fucker. Here are a couple links if you want to learn more about it:
And in case you wonder, the second loudest bird is the screaming piha (Lipaugus vociferans) at at 116 dB
At least this one sounds a bit more like an actual bird 😂 🐦