Roaring
The ability to roar comes from an elongated and specially adapted larynx and hyoid apparatus. (However, neither the snow leopard nor the cheetah can roar, despite having hyoid morphology similar to roaring cats.) When air passes through the larynx on the way from the lungs, the cartilage walls of the larynx vibrate, producing sound. The lion's larynx is longest, giving it the most robust roar.
Read more about this topic: Big Cat
Famous quotes containing the word roaring:
“All the stream that’s roaring by
Came out of a needle’s eye....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“For half a mile from the shore it was one mass of white breakers, which, with the wind, made such a din that we could hardly hear ourselves speak.... This was the stormiest sea that we witnessed,—more tumultuous, my companion affirmed, than the rapids of Niagara, and, of course, on a far greater scale. It was the ocean in a gale, a clear, cold day, with only one sail in sight, which labored much, as if it were anxiously seeking a harbor.... It was the roaring sea, thalassa exeessa.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)