Scientists in the Amazon Have Recorded the World's Loudest Bird. It Hits a Painful 125 Decibels
Visitors to the mountains of the northern Amazon can get unusually close to the white bellbird. Ornithologists have long suspected this bird’s call is the loudest in the world, but a recent trek into the mountains and some careful measurements confirm that male white bellbirds do indeed have the loudest birdsong ever recorded.
The observation, published Monday in the journal Current Biology, comes with some unanswered questions about the strange bird.
Most animals reserve their loudest calls for long-distance communication, says study coauthor Jeff Podos, a bird vocalization researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. But the male white bellbird blasts the louder of its two songs within 13 feet of females. As strange as the behavior is, it’s not too far-fetched a find in the Amazon. “If you’re going to see something weird going on in the bird world, you’re more likely to see it in the tropics,” Podos says.
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Credit: Anselmo d'Affonseca
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