White Bellbird Reaches 125 Desibel Sound Record
A bird’s call matches the ear-splitting roar of a highway rock drill at 125 desibels, setting the record for the bird with the loudest sound. That measurement outstrips the screaming piha by 9 desibels, according to data published in Current Biology and cited by detikInet.
While the white bellbird held that title, new research widens the scope of acoustic amplitudes. Behavioral ecologist Jeffrey Podos at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and former graduate student Joao C.T. Menezes expanded the dataset to 123 bird species. Their findings, published in the journal Evolution, document everything from the very quiet dark-tailed hermit hummingbird to newly identified contenders for the loudest avian calls.
Two New Contenders Exceed 120 Desibels
The study in Evolution identifies two separate bird species that exceed the 120-desibel threshold. Researchers documented these volumes in the bare-throated bellbird—a fellow member of the Procnias genus—and the red-legged seriema, a flightless bird native to Brazil. Both species now rank as contenders for birds with the loudest sound.
That survey covered populations across western Massachusetts and various regions of Brazil. Prior ornithological studies often favored analyzing bird song frequencies, dialects, and patterns over sheer volume. By systematically measuring sound pressure across 123 species, the research team built a foundational dataset that maps how loud avian vocalizations can get.
Physical Traits Explain How Birds Scream Loudly
The mechanics behind these calls are slowly coming to light, though the driving evolutionary pressures remain a mystery. Menezes pointed out that larger body sizes and wider beaks physically enable birds to project sound at such amplitudes.
We’ve significantly increased the number of species for which amplitude data are available. This is fundamental basic research that no one else has ever done on this scale, and it raises a number of other interesting follow-up questions.
Podos said.
Yet, researchers still lack a complete picture of why certain species evolved such calls while others do not. Menezes emphasized the ongoing knowledge gap regarding these biological adaptations.
Now we know some of the ‘how’. Larger bodies and wider beaks, but we haven’t yet discovered the ‘why’, and we’ll probably need more data from more species to unravel what’s really going on ecologically and evolutionary.
Menezes explained.
Frequently Asked Questions About Loud Bird Calls
How loud is 125 desibels in everyday terms?
A sound measuring 125 desibels equals the output of a highway rock drill.
Which bird holds the official world record for loudness?
The white bellbird holds the record at 125 desibels, beating out the screaming piha by a margin of 9 desibels according to comparative acoustic measurements.
What physical features help birds make such loud sounds?
Researchers studying avian acoustic amplitudes point to larger body sizes and wider beaks as the primary anatomical traits that allow certain species to project these sound levels.
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