Given their immense size, how loud would the call of a Brontosaur be to our sensors? Or the roar of a T-Rex?
Having done absolutely no research since I was eight years old, I’d like to start with a question: Are “they” sure dinos made ANY sounds, let alone roaring?
Thank you, Dr. Rhombus.
One can’t be sure, of course, but considering that the dinosaurs’ closest living relatives, the birds and the crocodilians, are both quite vocal, it’s very likely dinosaurs were too.
Some hadrosaurs likeParasaurolophus had large crests formed from extended nasal bones that may have been used to produce loud calls.
How load IS the roar of a dinosaur?
What alternate universe do you come from, OP?
Excellent points, Colibri, I should’ve figured that out myself.
Back to LR’s query: since a T-Rex is 10 times bigger than a croc*, would it be 10 times louder?
*Total speculation
I’m sure a T-Rex must be at least 1000 times larger than a modern macaw. If the call if the T-Rex is 1000 times louder than a macaw, it must be truly earth-shattering.
One in which the call of Wildious Turkeysarus is louder than I’d like. :o
Are there any non-mammals that roar? Crocs bellow and gurgle, lots of reptiles and birds hiss, shriek, honk, or…whatever geckos do. I think it’s pretty unlikely dinosaurs roared like in the movies.
Birds vocalize using the syrinx. I don’t think there’s a consensus on when it evolved exactly. Some theropod groups probably had it, but who knows which. Soft tissues and organs don’t tend to fossilize. For all you know tyrannosaurs had giant throat sacs like frogs.
According to computer models some sauropods could crack their tail like a whip. This article suggests it would sound like a cannon. Might be the loudest sound a dinosaur could make.
Given that many dinosaurs lived in large herds you would think some of them would have loud calls that would carry a good distance.
By any reasonable cladistic reckoning wild turkeys (lowercase) and all other birds ARE dinosaurs (xkcd: Birds and Dinosaurs). So the OP’s question makes sense at least that far, uppercase Wild Turkey notwithstanding.
And as the esteemed **Senegoid **points out, some modern dinosaurs are pretty damn loud.
Back around 1930, when Merian C, Cooper was making King Kong, he wrote to the experts at the American Museum of Natural History, asking them this very question. As Goldner and Turner relate, in The Makig of King Kong, he got back a long letter that translated to “they probably didn’t have any vocfal cords, and probably didn’t make any sound.” They ended up making the T. rex in Kong doing a sort of hissing sound, not a roar.
I don’;t know what current thinking is on this*, but I do know that virtually all dinosaurs, especially carnivores, roar in the movies. But that’s a visceral thing, like the “swoosh” of the starship Enterprise in space – something that big and mean, the audience feels, *ought[/] to roar.
Based on alligators, turtles, and lizards, you’d think that dinosaurs would hiss and make cannon-like thundering. Certainly the author of a certain Board Book would probably agree ( Dinosaur Roars - Yahoo Image Search Results ) But maybe that avian link points to possible other sounds.
*Here’s a link to a 2009 Smithsonian article on it:
If a dinosaur roars in the Jurassic and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?
Moo!
I wouldn’t be surprised if we go back in our time machine and find that T-Rex sounds exactly like this
NSFW
…I mean how’d you like to be woken by a 40 foot tyrannosaur peeking his head into your tent and roaring, “GET THE F** UP!”* in an Australian accent, then start dubsteppin? That would be slightly surreal.
Since all we have is speculation, I’d venture in addition to whatever vocalizations they did, that they could probably make infrasonic sounds, so they could make all sorts of noises that we’d never hear.
Do we know what the ear structures of the dinosaurs was like?
Probably not; sound generation tends to increase by a logarithmic scale, i.e., 10 more decibels is twice as loud. This is why there are 20 violins in an orchestra, but it’s not 20 times as loud as one violin.
Not sure what the effect would be due to the rate at which one was running away from the T-Rex.
I have four dinosaurs in my back yard as we speak, and I can tell you they sound exactly like cackling hens.
Sure. Alligators roar. So do crocs. (I’m not sure what distinction you are making between roaring and bellowing. They’re pretty much synonymous.)
Some birds also roar, notably the Great Potoo. So does thecassowary. Ostriches, emus, and Kakapo parrots all boom.
There is no reason to think that dinosaurs didn’t roar. They also probably made more diverse sounds, like those of birds.
Hell, if extant dinosaurs can make the noises of chainsaws and car alarms, they can make the noises of mammals roaring.