Anatomically correct banshee
The original, irish lore around banshees has it that they merely foretell the death of someone, but do not cause that death. American pop culture has changed this, so they do bring death and destruction - as seen in various media such as videogames, books (I remember there was a malicious one in some Harry Potter book) and cartoons. And they do that through screaming.
I am interested in the pop culture one. How do they bring about death and destruction? How can they be anatomically correct?
Since there is an element of legend and myth around banshees, it doesn't have to be the screaming that does the actual killing - but they need it for some evolutionary reason.
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1 answer
Resonance.
You know that trick where opera singers can shatter a wine glass? They do that by singing at the glass's resonant frequency, causing it to vibrate until it shatters. The same principle has been responsible for the collapse of multiple bridges, and is theoretically capable of collapsing entire buildings.
All your banshees have to do is scream loud enough, for long enough, at just the right frequency. In order to produce such loud, long screams, your banshees would also need superhuman lung capacity, and probably specialised vocal chords in order to be able to produce the right frequencies every time.
As for why they would have evolved the ability to scream like this, perhaps they have a predator species or prey species with the ability to construct things, like beaver dams or rabbit warrens (or human dwellings... [scare chord]). They developed the resonant screams as a means of collapsing those structures, either as self-defense against the predator, or to trap the prey.
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