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| Steve from washington, dc, usa, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons |
The loudest noise in the world naturally produced from a land animal is not the trumpeting of an elephant or the roar of a lion--it is instead the call of the male aptly-named howler monkey of Central and South America. The volume of sound produced by a single monkey can achieve 140 decibels--right up there with that of a jet engine and even louder than the crack of a .22 rifle.
As you may suspect, boy monkeys howl for the same reasons that some human males sit around and rev their motorcycle engines--to announce to the immediate world that they are brimming over with testosterone and virility and are eager to couple with a compliant female. Male howler monkeys with the largest hyoid bones in their throats produce the loudest volumes of calls and have the best luck getting the girls.
Ironically, however, these big hyoid-boned calls constitute false advertising. Researchers have discovered that the individual howler monkeys with the quieter voices actually have larger testes than their loud-mouthed associates. What happens is that the loud monkey generally assembles a harem of females who service only him, and there is no evolutionary benefit for him to be able to produce huge quantities of sperm in order to be able to fertilize a mate. The quieter monkeys, however, tend to live in colonies with other males and females. The females in this situation are promiscuous, and a male monkey who has big balls which can provide an elevated sperm count enjoys improved odds that one of his spermatazoa will the be lucky one to reach the egg ahead of the seed of his rival suitors.
Well, what about our human motorcycle exhibitionist? Is his sexual equipment substandard? Well...
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