Washington (AFP)
To twist the eardrums or make the heart beat? It is for love that the white araponga, designated Monday the world's noisiest bird, resonates his song in the depths of the Amazon.
"He sings the first note, turned to the outside, then he makes a dramatic, almost theatrical rotation (...) expelling a second note in the direction of his contender", describes the biologist Jeff Podos of AFP Amherst University in the state of Massachusetts, co-author of a study on this carillonneur, published Monday in the journal Current Biology.
The sounds that emanate from this small animal - 250g and the size of a dove - are so deafening that the researchers wondered how his suitors could listen to them without damaging the hearing. They can reach up to 113 decibels, the equivalent of a loud rock concert, a level deemed at risk for humans.
The biologist, however, had the chance to observe females, green color, join their lucky elected during his noisy serenade.
"We do not know how such small animals get so noisy," says Jeff Podos, who used high quality sound recorders and filmed the bird at high resolution to try to understand the phenomenon.
The researchers found that the more noisy the call was, the shorter it was because of its limited breathing capacity. This anatomical feature should, according to them, prevent the bird from beating indefinitely acoustic records.
© 2019 AFP