Woodpecker When pecking hard, the head will rush towards the tree trunk at a speed of 6m/s. The impact force on its head is equivalent to 1,000 times the gravity it is subjected to, but why does the woodpecker never have a concussion?
For a long time, people have believed that the woodpecker's head is like a shock-absorbing helmet, which has been protecting the woodpecker's head.
However, a recent paper published in the United States "Contemporary Biology" directly refuted this view and found the real answer.
Concussion Terminator
is different from most birds. Woodpeckers not only do not like to move on the ground, but even branches rarely stay. They prefer to climb on the trunk, use their hard mouth to knock on the trunk until the pest is exposed, and then use their slender tongue to hook out the insects hidden in the tree hole. Therefore, woodpeckers are also called " Forest Doctor ".
Do you think the woodpecker can just knock on the tree twice and poke a big hole on the hard trunk? Of course it is impossible.
No matter how hard their beaks are, they cannot withstand such knocks. If you want to hurt the tree and not harm yourself, woodpeckers must be "fast, accurate and cruel".
How fast is the woodpecker's knocking speed? Let’s take a look at their workload every day.
Woodpeckers hit tree trunks 500-600 times a day, and tens of thousands of times a day. In order to ensure quality and quantity, woodpeckers can knock on tree trunks 15-20 times per second, and the speed can reach 2,092 kilometers per hour, which is 37 times faster than a car with a speed of 55 kilometers per hour.
Because the speed is too fast, the woodpecker's head will also bear greater impact force, which is equivalent to 250 times the impact force required by astronauts to withstand when launching a rocket. A normal person would have had a concussion under such a fast and powerful external force collision, but the woodpecker had nothing to do and could continue to work the next day.
There is no need to fight like this even for food, right? That's because you don't know much about woodpeckers. In addition to finding food and nesting purposes, they work diligently to hit trees, and they have special uses. When a male woodpecker is courting, he will use his hard beak to hit the hollow tree trunk rhythmically to make a crisp "tuk" sound to court the female bird.
So, the woodpecker's special exercises are also working hard to find a partner. After all, the better you knock, the more you can win the hearts of the opposite sex.
What secret weapon does the woodpecker have when he hits the tree trunk every day and will not be hurt?
The unique body structure of the woodpecker
In order to find the secret of the woodpecker's brain structure, the researchers also took great pains to study the head of the woodpecker clearly. They found that woodpeckers not only look for food in a unique way, but also have an unusually unique body structure.
For example, the root of the tongue of a general animal grows deep in the mouth, but the tongue of a woodpecker breaks the routine and fixes its tongue at the nostrils.
The woodpecker's tongue sprang out from the right nostril of the upper palate and extended to the back of the brain. At this point, the tongue will be divided into two, passing over the eyes, surrounding the brain for a while, then passing through the jaw and back into the mouth, looking like two long "seat belts". Therefore, many people also speculate that the reason why woodpeckers do not have concussion is that when they hit the tree trunk at high speed, their tongues can firmly hold the skull and reduce impact.
Although woodpeckers will not be damaged under high-frequency impact, they should also prevent exposed eyes and accidentally get injured by shock.
Whenever the head hits the tree trunk, their eyes will immediately close, and a protective film called "Silent Film" under the eyelids will immediately wrap around the eyes. It can not only prevent wood chips from hurting the eyes, but also prevent eyeballs from accidentally popping out of the eye sockets under long-term impact.
In addition, in order to prevent woodpeckers from sliding down when pecking, their toes and tails have also begun to evolve advanced effects. Generally, birds have three toes in front and one toe behind, but woodpeckers are different. They have two toes forward and two toes backward, which can help them hold the tree trunk firmly.
At the same time, the hard and elastic tail of the woodpecker can also support the body when is woodpecker.
Under the dual protection of the toes and tail, the woodpecker can not only stand firmly on the trunk in a vertical ground manner, but also jump up and down the trunk, or crawl around to both sides.
Of course, no matter how powerful the woodpecker is, there are times when it makes mistakes. For example, when they tap, their beaks are accidentally stuck. At this time, they will alternately move their upper and lower beaks, slowly shrink out of the tree hole, and get out of the predicament.
The protection mechanism of the woodpecker itself is unique. So, how does the woodpecker prevent the brain from shock?
The reason why the concussion cannot be knocked out
At first, scientists believed that the reason why the woodpecker's head would not be harmed was because there was a "sponge-shaped" skull between their upper beak and eye sockets, which could weaken the impact at the moment when the woodpecker pecked.
To find out whether this view is correct, the researchers conducted experiments on three different woodpeckers. They marked multiple frame-by-frame tracking points on the head and beak of the woodpecker, and then used the high-speed camera to record the process of the woodpecker pecking tree.
According to the hypothetical perspective, when the woodpecker hits a tree, the beak should be hit the strongest, and the head should have a slowing process.
However, in many tracking experiments, scientists found that the moment the woodpecker pecked at the tree, its head and beak stopped almost at the same time. This " sponge " skull did not have obvious slowing and buffering processes, and even showed a very stiffness.
In other words, the body structure of the woodpecker actually does not absorb the impact force generated by impacting the tree trunk.
At the same time, scientists also found that any absorption effect on impact force will weaken the pecking ability of the woodpecker. Whether it is the skull or the long hyoid bone , it will not actually have any shock absorption effect.
This directly broke people's long-term cognition, so the researchers directly refuted the "shock absorption theory" that has been widely mentioned in the media and books in the United States published in July 2022.
They proposed that woodpeckers can peck wood for a long time but cannot be concussed, not because they have a "shock absorber" on their heads, but because the head of the woodpecker itself is a hard "hammer". The head of the woodpecker never absorbs the impact of the pecking, but keeps "head-on-head" with the tree trunk.
Since the skull of the woodpecker cannot play a shock-absorbing effect, how does the woodpecker avoid concussion?
In fact, this is also due to their petite heads.
On the one hand, the head of the woodpecker is composed of various tiny and light bones. The actual weight of their skull bones accounts for only about 1% of their total weight, which is very light.
On the other hand, the woodpecker's brain is also relatively small, only 2 grams, while the human brain capacity is 1,400 grams, which is 700 times that of the woodpecker. At the same speed, the woodpecker's head will not withstand the pressure changes as big as the human brain. Only by increasing the woodpecker's woodpecker's speed to twice, will their small heads be damaged.
And scientists were inspired by the woodpecker to develop safety sports protective caps and shock-proof helmets.At present, biologists and neuroscientists are also actively studying the brain structure of woodpeckers to see if their brain structure contains other factors that can affect their brains and not be damaged by impact. Perhaps it can be based on this to study safer brain protection facilities.
