questions about my screeching wyvern?

Question

OK, this how it goes for my wyvern (they're called scaled howlers) in my story:

• my wyvern are not very large, almost the size of a Haast eagle

• They mate for life, forming strong monogamous pair bonds

• they defend themselves by producing a powerful piercing screech (for around 7 seconds) that can be heard for miles, and is strong enough to harm (the ones that can't cover its ear) and temporarily stun attackers (stop them in their tracks) who can hear it (like causing any humans to hold its ears in pain), and this especially helps to call its mate to help it to fends its attackers

so my question is: can its screeching ability be biologically plausible? if so what the anatomy that my wyvern can have to produce this powerful piercing screech, like what is the frequency or decibel that it can have in order to stun its attackers or how does it prevent itself from getting hurt?

Answer 1

we have even more extreme examples, so yes.

While the blue whale is usually thought to be the loudest animal at usually around 175 decibels to 180,the Sperm whale can produce clicks of up to 200 decibels, which is around what it takes to kill a person. However, this is aided by the fact that they're in the water, and that's not where your wyvern lives, apparently.

Lucky we have another example that might just be what we're looking for: the greater bulldog bat.

The greater bulldog Bat, due to the easily dissipated ultrasound frequencies they use to hunt, need to Procure very loud calls in order to be effective. This resulted in an animal that, despite its relatively small size, can create sounds at a maximum of around 140 decibels at 10 cm away and 120 from a meter away. How does it avoid being deafened by its own call? Apparently it tightly squeezes its ear muscles to muffle the sound that arrives,as well as to separate their hearing bones, thus reducing sensitivity to sound. This process takes less than a second. This seem to be a common strategy against bats.

So while I couldn't give you the answer "we got animals that can kill you with sound, that ain't nothing", we do have examples of animals with calls more than loud enough, so longe as you're in the right range, to make you feel like your eardrums will burst. If an animal much smaller than your wyvern can do it, it surely can as well. The main differences here will be about the frequency however. Not only these bat's calls aren't feared due to being above what we can hear, they're ultrasound, meaning they don't propagate over long distances. To reach your "can be heard over miles and cause pain in humans" goal, your wyvern will need frequencies a bit closer to infrasound, but still within the human's hearing capabilities. Elephants for example, can produce rumbles that can propagate over around 6 miles away, and nowadays we assume that t-rex too used similar frequencies to communicate over miles. With the right frequency at this intensity, it can certainly cause pain and most likely confuse nearby humans, as well as other animal which hear at similar frequencies.