Woodpeckers Don't Have Built-in Shock Absorbers to Protect Their Brain
upstart writes:
Woodpeckers' skulls aren't built to absorb shock, but rather to deliver a harder and more efficient hit into wood.
Woodpeckers hammer their beaks onto tree trunks to communicate, to look for food or to create a cavity for nesting. Spongy bone between the birds' brains and beaks was once thought to cushion their brains from the repetitive blows. But the tissue actually helps their heads tap swiftly and deeply with minimal energy use, much like a well-designed hammer, says Sam Van Wassenbergh at the University of Antwerp in Belgium.
"We had a feeling that this didn't make any sense, this shock absorption [theory]," he says. "A hammer with shock absorption built into it is simply a bad hammer."
[...] Despite the lack of shock absorption, the team found that the birds' brains aren't at risk of a concussion because the impact isn't strong enough. Given the size and weight of woodpecker brains, situated inside fluid-filled cases in their skulls, they would only sustain brain damage if they pecked twice as fast as they naturally do, or if they hit surfaces four times harder than their natural wood targets.
"It's just normal that a smaller organism can withstand these higher [forces]," says Van Wassenbergh, drawing a parallel with flies hitting windows at even higher forces: "They just take off and fly again."
The term "spongy bone" doesn't mean that the bone is soft or can compress, he says. Rather, it indicates that the bone is porous and lightweight - which is critical for flying birds. "The bone is just strong enough for the function that it needs to do," he says.
Journal Reference:
Sam Van Wassenbergh, Erica J. Ortlieb, Maja Mielke, et al. Woodpeckers minimize cranial absorption of shocks [open], Current Biology, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.05.052
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