In the Amazon rainforest, lives what biologist called ‘the loudest bird’ with its grating hair-raising screech for a mating call. The sounds come from male white bellbirds.
According to the study by Jeff Podos, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts, the bird’s call is twice as loud as its cousin, the screaming Piha, another Amazon native.
During mating seasons, the rainforest would ring out with the screams of male white bellbirds. What’s more interesting is that they would blast into the female’s face as part of the courtship ritual. Surprisingly, the blast did not damage the female’s hearing. Guess, that is considered romantic among the species. This reminisces of the boombox serenade in Say Anything but bird version.
Bob Mulvihill, an ornithologist at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh, says that male birds generally will tone down courtship displays if the female seems fearful. Podos describes this ritual in the animal kingdom as ‘adorably dorky’.
Source: National Geographic, SciNews