The “Kill Your Mother-in-Law” Bird’s Call is as Creepy as the Myth Surrounding It. Listen for Yourself.

The wilderness provides some interesting sounds. At night, these sounds take on stranger dimensions: cooing, cawing, chimp-like bellowing, and cackling, all emerging from the foliage without providing any sense of the creature producing them or where they are located. Sometimes, those sounds are made more mysterious by the fact that the organism producing them looks nothing like you would expect.

Take the helmeted hornbill, for example. With its bulbous, helmet-like head, it almost looks like a dinosaur. Then it emits an eerie call that sounds more like a chimp howling deep in the jungle. Even with scientific classification, the helmeted hornbill remains a mysterious creature. Its unreal appearance and vocalizations have led to its inclusion in many Southeast Asian myths. But what is the helmeted hornbill and why does it make that caterwaul, chimp-like noise? Watch this video, and we will explore the topic further.

Helmeted Hornbill Background

The helmeted hornbill (Rhinoplax vigil) is a large bird of the hornbill family. Weighing between 5-7 pounds, with over 10% of its weight in its head, the helmeted hornbill undoubtedly takes up space. This bird lives in various parts of the Malay Peninsula including Sumatra, Thailand, Borneo, and Myanmar. There, it flies among the trees, eating mostly fruit from strangler figs. While considered territorial in its movement and monogamous in its breeding habits, the day-to-day life of helmeted hornbills remains mysterious.

As seen in the video, their appearance is characterized by predominantly black plumage with a long tail containing two extended central tail feathers. Male helmeted hornbills have red, wrinkled throat patches while females’ throat areas have a color ranging from pale blue and green. The most glaring feature of helmeted hornbills, however, is their casque. This hard, helmet-like structure begins at the base of its bill and ends halfway to the tip. Like a turkey’s gullet fashioned in stone, the helmeted hornbill’s casque is startling in its appearance, strong in its weight, and perfect fodder for folklore.

The Hornbill’s Spiritual Importance

Much like its relative the rhinoceros hornbill, the helmeted hornbill plays a major role in local belief systems. The Punan Bah cultures in Malaysia and Indonesia consider the helmeted hornbill to be ferrymen between one life and the next. In the same way that Ancient Egyptians saw Anubis, the Punan Bah people treat the helmeted hornbill as a guardian, patrolling the ethereal passage between life and death, judging souls as they pass, and directing them to their final destination.

Beyond symbolizing life, death, and bravery, the bird’s feathers and unique head casque play an integral role in cultural traditions. They play a part in many local rituals, ceremonies, and superstitions. This makes the hornbill’s head a prized possession. It finds its way into many carvings, headpieces, and centerpieces. Even in the modern day, a helmeted hornbill’s head fetches a pretty penny, but this, in turn, has led to a serious decrease in their population. With increasing habitat loss and unregulated hunting, the helmeted hornbill is considered critically endangered.

The Hornbill’s Clarion Call

As heard in the video, the helmeted hornbill can produce distinct, uncanny sounds. When they vocalize, it consists of two parts. The first is a pattern of intermittent hoots like that of a chimp, which rise in frequency and tone until they crescendo, transforming into a cackling, laughter-like effusion.

Their calls are strong and persistent, reaching up to two miles away and lasting for minutes at a time. Like other birds, helmeted hornbills make their sound using the syrinx. A bird’s syrinx is located where the trachea splits into two bronchi approaching the lungs. Sound emerges from air vibrating through its membranes.

Fact and Fiction

Certain groups of Malay people call the helmeted hornbill the “Tebang Mentua,” or “kill your mother-in-law” bird. It’s a very violent name, but it speaks to an important myth. As the story goes, a man hated his mother-in-law so much he destroyed the foundation of her house while she was still inside. The gods punished him for his transgression by transforming him into a helmeted hornbill. Its axe-chopping-wood call that results in cackling makes the condemned man relive his crime forever (the axe sound of destroying the house and the cackle as he gets his malevolent wish).

Science, however, suggests more mundane reasons for the helmeted hornbill’s distinctive call. The first part of the hornbill’s call, the growing pattern of whoops, acts as a query to other hornbills in the area. Scientists believe the second part of its call—the fever-pitched cackle—acts as an advertisement of sorts, informing other hornbills of the sounders’ age, size, and physical condition.

The helmeted hornbill’s chimp-like call made it a perfect complement to myth, but practically, it functions more like a dating profile than a spiritual call to arms. Everyone wants to be heard, and the helmeted hornbill is no exception.