aster 
looked up “how do car horns work” because I was curious and one of the related questions is “do car horns run out of honk” which is endlessly hilarious to me
Owls@variance ...do they?
@candlebrae contemporary ones don’t because they’re electric (it’s one of those things where a circuit rapidly switching on and off through a spring-like mechanism creates vibrations in a metal drum which create sound). so long as the battery has charge and the mechanism doesn’t break, they can honk endlessly!
@variance Huh, makes sense! What about non-contemporary ones?
@candlebrae the old ones were basically like those toy horns with bulbs of air that you squeeze which make a sound when you squeeze them but can’t do so for long bc you need to stop and let the bulb fill back up with air again
also some vehicles (eg construction trucks) use air horns (which pump compressed air through a horn) but there’s noise regulations on those bc they’re extremely loud