Deep in the Serra do Mar mountains of Brazil, a curious call echoes from high in the jungle canopy. The sound is practically deafening, a loud metallic pang that cuts through the forest’s thick foliage.
The bare-throated bellbird, which produces such calls to attract female mates, is no larger than a dove. And yet his song is louder than a jackhammer or a chain saw. It’s louder than an elephant’s trumpet.
It is, according a new scientific study, one of the loudest birdsongs ever recorded.
“They can even exceed elephants and lions and wolves and bison,” said João Menezes, an evolutionary biologist and lead author of the study, recently published in the journal Evolution.
Joining the bellbird at the top of the volume charts, the researchers found, is another Brazilian species: the red-legged seriema.
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The two birds now join a previously identified bellbird species as the loudest avians known to science.
The study also uncovered a few of the anatomical traits that allow these birds to belt such powerful songs, answering many of the questions underlying the mysteries of birdsong.
“This new study is by far the largest cross-species comparison of sound amplitude in birds,” said Gonçalo Cardoso, an ornithologist at the University of Porto who was not involved with the research. “This is just the tip of the iceberg.”
The new work focuses specifically on amplitude, a measure of the height of a sound wave, which helps determine how far a sound can travel. Amplitude is a major component of loudness and is crucial to our perception of sound.
“Until recently, it was very impractical to go out into the field and measure amplitude,” Dr. Menezes said.
