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Why do woodpeckers never get headaches?

2022-08-03 17:29:33Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Why do woodpeckers never get headaches?
Why woodpeckers never get headaches

Woodpeckers are birds famous for only one thing: they spend their days banging their heads on trees. Beaking on logs is their main activity, which they need to get food, build a nest and communicate with other people, writes focus.it.

Then the question arises: how can they not get hurt? And how do they not have constant headaches?

Part of it is how their body (especially the neck and skull) has changed to withstand impacts. But a new study published in Current Biology proposes an alternative hypothesis: woodpeckers' brains are too small for these birds to worry about, and the aforementioned modifications are actually not for defense, but to increase the efficiency of the "strike." .

The study focused on three species in particular: the black woodpecker, the common woodpecker and the great spotted woodpecker. For all three birds, the team from the University of Antwerp, Belgium, analyzed hundreds of videos with very high frames, which then allow us to analyze in detail the very fast movements that woodpeckers make when they hit a log.

In this way they were able to test the hypothesis that is the most popular: that, namely, that spikes resist damage to their heads thanks to a series of physiological adaptations, from particularly powerful neck muscles to spongy muscles capable of soften the impact with the tree.

All features that appear to be purposely made to absorb the shock when the beak strikes the trunk: if so, the speed achieved by the striking beak itself must be greater than that achieved by the bird's eyes, which "arrive at late” and therefore benefit from the slowdown.

Woodpecker eyes were chosen by the team as a reference point because they are soft structures and have a direct connection to the brain. That's why the analysis of the videos gave the researchers a surprise: the woodpeckers' eyes (and therefore their brains) don't experience any kind of slowdown when hitting a tree, and the various anatomical structures actually don't seem to change anything.

According to the authors of the study, the cancellous bones, neck muscles and other adaptations of the spikes are not used to absorb the impact, but to resist breakage and allow the animal to hit the trunk with all possible force.


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