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Fowl language: Amazonian bird's mating call noisiest in world
Source: The Guardian
Fowl language: Amazonian bird's mating call noisiest in world
White bellbird’s call reaches same volume as pneumatic drill during courtship ritual
Daniel Grossman produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center
Mon 21 Oct 2019 16.20 BST
Last modified on Mon 21 Oct 2019 16.35 BST
A bird in the Amazon has shattered the record for the loudest call to be recorded, reaching the same volume as a pneumatic drill.
The white bellbird, which lives in the mountains of the north-eastern Amazon, was recorded at 125 decibels (dB), three times louder than the next bird in the pecking order, the screaming piha.
Mario Cohn-Haft, an ornithologist at the National Institute of Amazonian Research and the author of a paper published in the journal Current Biology, captured a male white bellbird specimen in the Brazilian state of Roraima in 2017.
It was about 30cm (12in) long from beak to tail, said Cohn-Haft. He dissected it in the field, removing the skin and some organs to prepare it to be added to his collection. Something caught his eye under the bird’s pure white feathers: a muscular, sculpted chest. “It had a six pack,” he said, with tissue five times thicker than that of most birds its size.
Cohn-Haft enlisted the help of Jeff Podos, an animal behaviour specialist at the University of Massachusetts and a co-author of the paper, to study the white bellbird. They suspected that the bird’s muscular physique might explain its earsplitting song: the male sings an explosive two-toned cry.
-snip-
White bellbird’s call reaches same volume as pneumatic drill during courtship ritual
Daniel Grossman produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center
Mon 21 Oct 2019 16.20 BST
Last modified on Mon 21 Oct 2019 16.35 BST
A bird in the Amazon has shattered the record for the loudest call to be recorded, reaching the same volume as a pneumatic drill.
The white bellbird, which lives in the mountains of the north-eastern Amazon, was recorded at 125 decibels (dB), three times louder than the next bird in the pecking order, the screaming piha.
Mario Cohn-Haft, an ornithologist at the National Institute of Amazonian Research and the author of a paper published in the journal Current Biology, captured a male white bellbird specimen in the Brazilian state of Roraima in 2017.
It was about 30cm (12in) long from beak to tail, said Cohn-Haft. He dissected it in the field, removing the skin and some organs to prepare it to be added to his collection. Something caught his eye under the bird’s pure white feathers: a muscular, sculpted chest. “It had a six pack,” he said, with tissue five times thicker than that of most birds its size.
Cohn-Haft enlisted the help of Jeff Podos, an animal behaviour specialist at the University of Massachusetts and a co-author of the paper, to study the white bellbird. They suspected that the bird’s muscular physique might explain its earsplitting song: the male sings an explosive two-toned cry.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/21/fowl-language-amazonian-birds-mating-call-noisiest-in-world-white-bellbird
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Related: Extremely loud mating songs at close range in white bellbirds (Current Biology)
