![]() Yet a shock-absorbing skull would also lessen the energy that reaches the tree. “The birds accelerate their head up to a certain speed, giving it this movement energy they want to transfer to the tree to damage or hit away parts of the bark,” Van Wassenbergh says. Some proposed that spongy bone between the beak and braincase, or muscles surrounding the beak, could minimize the shock from the impact.īut this idea presents a paradox. Many researchers believed that woodpeckers have some kind of cushioning in their skulls that acts like an airbag or helmet. “It’s a logical thing to expect that woodpeckers are adapted to not get any headaches, or to not get a concussion during their daily activities,” he says. This kind of impact can cause brain tissue at the front of the skull to compress while tissue at the back is pulled away from the braincase, says Sam Van Wassenbergh, a biomechanist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium and coauthor of the paper. When a woodpecker strikes its beak into tree bark, its head abruptly decelerates. “This is basically what the woodpeckers need to do to survive, so if they’re not sleeping and they’re not resting, they are probably pecking on something,” Hochachka says. Woodpeckers drum into trees to find food, build nests, and communicate during the breeding season. “It seems like actually the impacts are not as severe as people had just assumed,” says Wesley Hochachka, an ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who wasn’t involved in the research. What’s more, because woodpecker brains are so small, they don’t sustain the kind of damage that a human would endure from similar impacts, the authors reported today in Current Biology. If the birds had shock-absorbing skulls, the hardware would just get in the way, the team concluded. Researchers filmed three species of captive woodpeckers pounding away, and found that their heads behave like “stiff hammers” to peck as efficiently as possible. Many ornithologists have assumed that the shape and composition of woodpecker skulls have evolved to dampen this shock, but a new analysis indicates that the birds don’t have-or need-this kind of protection. ![]() When they smash their beaks against trees, they’re subjected to forces that would easily knock a person silly. Woodpeckers lead a pretty high-impact lifestyle. Erica Ortlieb & Robert Shadwick/University of British Columbia SHARE The Acorn Woodpeckers in Ashland, Oregon, are prodigious, as they have many trees along Lithia Creek and telephone poles in the area hills that are pocked with their seeds in preparation for the winter that is coming.Instead of looking inside the pileated woodpecker's brain, a team of biomechanic experts measured the deceleration of its eyes, skull, and beak as it pecked. Diet also includes various nuts, fruits, seeds, and sometimes eggs of other birds. It also feeds on insects, particularly ants. Acorns make up about half of annual diet, and are of major importance during winter. This bird will eat almost anything of a certain size that moves. The diet of this woodpecker, contrary to common belief is vast. And the tree may be riddled with up to 50,000 holes. Forming their nuts in what is called a “granary tree,” the woodpeckers may use the tree for generations. Best known for its habit of hoarding acorns, the bird drills small holes in a dead trees, and harvests the acorns in fall and stores them in these holes during winter. Appearing to have a clown-like face, this western woodpecker has a complicated social structure, living in small colonies. The acorn woodpecker is named for its favorite diet, which is stores in telephone poles, trees, snags, and walls, wherever it can dig a hole above the ground, away from the competing foragers. The bird was an Acorn Woodpecker and the location was Muir Woods, California. It’s back was dark black and had an iridescent glow to it or sheen in the sunlight. The species had a black eye mask and a white belly. It could also be described as a bishop’s skull cap. ![]() The bird had a bright red head feathers, which looked as if it were wearing a red yarmulke. In seconds the bird flew back to the tree and shoved the oak nut into the hole and pecked it so that the surface of the nut was flush with the tree. Next it flew to the ground and picked up a nut from a local oak tree. It landed on a tree ten feet away and started pecking hard, expanding a hole to about the size of a dime. In undulating flight the bird flew right over our heads. Birds: Acorn Woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus)
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