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If you routinely and repeatedly bang your head against a wall in the vain hope that doing so will alter reality, then you should know that it’s not as safe as when a woodpecker does it. How can these birds hammer away like they do without suffering brain injuries? Scientists think that they have the answer:
The birds have little “sub-dural space” between their brains and their skulls, so the brain does not have room to bump around as it does in humans. Also, their brains are longer top-to-bottom than front-to-back, meaning the force against the skull is spread over a larger brain area.
Close examination of the birds’ movements permitted researchers to create a computer simulation. It revealed that:
Firstly, the hyoid bone’s looping structure around the whole skull was found to act as a “safety belt”, especially after the initial impact.
The team also found that the upper and lower halves of the birds’ beaks were uneven, and as force was transmitted from the tip of the beak into the bone, this asymmetry lowered the load that made it as far as the brain.
Lastly, plate-like bones with a “spongy” structure at different points in the skull helped distribute the incoming force, thereby protecting the brain.
Link -via Nerdcore | Photo: Flickr user texas_mustang
When
11-year-old aspiring veterinarian Skylar Capo came across a baby woodpecker
about to be cat lunch, she sprang into action and saved it.
When she couldn't find the baby's mom, she took it home to take care of it ... that's when she (and the bird) ran into a danger far worse than the feline menace. They ran into (dun dun dun!!!) a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent:
"She was just going to take care of it for a day or two, make sure it was safe and uninjured, and then she was going to let it go," said Capo.
But on the drive home, the Capo family stopped at a Lowes in Fredericksburg and they brought the bird inside because of the heat. That's when they were confronted by a fellow shopper who said she worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. [...]
... roughly two weeks later, that same woman from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service showed up at Capo's front door. This time, Capo says the woman was accompanied by a state trooper. Capo refused to accept a citation, but was later mailed a notice to appear in U.S. District Court for unlawfully taking a migratory bird. She's also been slapped with a $535 fine.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service later apologized and rescinded the fine, blaming bad press, er ... "clerical error."
Nobody enjoys being awakened by the unnatural sound of an alarm clock. British product designer Natalie Duckett has invented an alarm clock that mimics the natural sound of a woodpecker.
– via arbroath
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A crimson-crested woodpecker battles an olive whipsnake on Peru’s Yarapa River. One presumes that the snake was stealing eggs or attacking chicks in the woodpeckers’ nest. The battle ends by the 3:00 mark.
Remember the post about where have all the acorns gone? Well, we’ve found some of ‘em.
When a microwave radio transmitter stopped working, engineers discovered that the antenna had been used as acorn storage device by woodpeckers.
– via reddit
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