The bird that imitates chainsaws and car alarms
This bird can perfectly copy a chainsaw, a car alarm, and even a camera shutter.
Which one is REALLY true about the Lyrebird?
The short version
The Australian lyrebird has the most complex voice box of any bird and mimics almost any sound it hears — other birds, koalas, chainsaws, camera clicks and car alarms — all to impress a mate.
Why it's so weird
- ✓The Lyrebird can perfectly imitate a chainsaw, a car alarm and a camera shutter.
- ✓The Lyrebird has the most complex voice box of any bird.
- ✓The Lyrebird other birds, koalas and even dingoes in the wild.
- ✓The Lyrebird does all of its to impress a mate.
You could line up about 1 of them along a 7-year-old!
The full story
This bird can perfectly copy the sound of a chainsaw, a car alarm, and even a camera shutter. Meet the lyrebird, which has the single most complex voice box of any bird on the entire planet. It uses that incredible voice to imitate almost any sound that it hears, with honestly terrifying accuracy. Out in the wild, they will copy other birds, koalas, and even the calls of dingoes. But near humans, they have been recorded mimicking chainsaws, camera clicks, car alarms, and even crying babies, perfectly. And here is the craziest part. The males do all of this for one single reason, to impress a female and win a mate. So just imagine being serenaded, except the romantic love song is a chainsaw. Follow for more weird animals.
Birds don't sing with a throat box like ours. They use a special organ called a syrinx, deep in the chest where the windpipe splits toward the lungs. Tiny muscles squeeze and stretch this organ while air rushes through, changing the pitch and shape of the sound, and a songbird can control its two sides separately to make two sounds at once. The lyrebird has an unusually specialized syrinx plus a great memory for sounds, which lets it copy almost anything; but scientists are honest that they don't fully understand exactly why this bird is such a perfect mimic when other birds aren't.
📚 Source: Superb Lyrebird — The Australian Museum ↗Scientists record wild lyrebirds and play the calls back through sound-analysis software (spectrograms), which shows the bird's copy almost perfectly matches the original chainsaw or bird call, and dissections of the bird's vocal organ reveal its special syrinx muscles.
📚 Source: Superb Lyrebird — The Australian Museum ↗Watch the 45-second version
Lyrebird gallery
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“The Lyrebird can perfectly imitate a chainsaw, a car alarm and a camera shutter.”
“The Lyrebird never sits on its eggs, and builds a giant compost heap to hatch them instead.”
“The Lyrebird has the most complex voice box of any bird.”