Which birds are really the loudest on Earth?
Two extraordinary contenders emerge from a new investigation into bird calls — but the mystery goes deeper than a contest for the loudest voice.
A bird’s voice can dominate a landscape long before its owner comes into view. But deciding which species produces the most powerful call requires more than an impressive encounter in the field.
Researchers João C. T. Menezes and Jeffrey Podos have identified two striking contenders: the Bare-throated Bellbird and Red-legged Seriema. Both produced calls exceeding 120 peak decibels in work described by the University of Massachusetts Amherst on 29 September.
That does not amount to the announcement of a definitive new world record. Instead, the birds emerged from a much broader investigation into why some species can call so much louder than others.
Bigger bodies and wider beaks, but we’ve yet to discover the whys
João C. T. Menezes
The study, published in Evolution, assembled original measurements from 123 species. In its standardised comparison, vocal amplitude ranged from 64 to 122 decibels at one metre, spanning a hummingbird at the quiet end and a cotinga at the loud end.
Distance is crucial: a call measured close to a bird cannot simply be compared with one recorded much farther away. The fieldwork paired portable sound meters with laser rangefinders, allowing the researchers to establish how far away a calling bird was as they measured its voice. Their work covered sites around Amherst, Massachusetts, and across Brazil.
The comparisons revealed a clear physical pattern. Larger species and birds with wider gape openings tended to produce greater vocal amplitude. Those relationships offer clues to the mechanics of powerful calls, although they do not by themselves explain why particular species evolved them.
Other predictions proved less straightforward. The analysis did not find unequivocal support for broad relationships between loudness and aerial mobility, habitat density or mating system. Simple explanations — such as birds needing louder voices because they live in thick vegetation — therefore remain insufficient across the species examined.
30 Sep 2026
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