How do we know they don't get headaches? Did they ask them?
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Why woodpeckers can hammer without getting headaches (2022)
21–30 of 48 posts
Re: Why woodpeckers can hammer without getting headaches (2022)
#22Afraid to admit how long I've pondered the incredible evolutionary feat that is the woodpecker.
Re: Why woodpeckers can hammer without getting headaches (2022)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you haven't already, you should check to see if you have rot or some kind of insect infestation. Around here, at least, they typically only go after wood with bugs inside.
Those fuckers woild pound on my gutters for hours. Never once on anything other than the aluminum gutters. But they love the loud hammering sound, as it calls out to potential mates. So when they find something loud they will tend to come back to it.
A couple years ago a wooden power pole (well specked with woodpecker drilled holes over the decades) in my backyard was replaced with a fiberglass one. At least one local woodpecker hasn't realized the futility of hammering on it to the tune of honestly almost cartoonish hollow BONK BONK BONK sounds, and continues to try to find a meal in the thing.
I feel bad for the bird at this point.
Re: Why woodpeckers can hammer without getting headaches (2022)
#24Had a woodpecker in the hood a few years ago that liked to bang on metal lightpoles, to no ill effect. The apparent spouse would usually come shoo them off the pole after awhile, unproductive as such work is. Made quite a noise though.
Re: Why woodpeckers can hammer without getting headaches (2022)
#25Had a woodpecker in the hood a few years ago that liked to bang on metal lightpoles, to no ill effect. The apparent spouse would usually come shoo them off the pole after awhile, unproductive as such work is. Made quite a noise though.
"Everything the light touches" is "within earshot" for woodpeckers, so they do like to hammer away on such items: https://youtu.be/F0v-CukKW5Y
Re: Why woodpeckers can hammer without getting headaches (2022)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, if they couldn't find the easy food, they had to go dig for grubs in the trees
Well, that would be a natural explanation if it were any of the 10 thousand nearby trees, or telephone poles even, and not the window awning. But it could just coincidentally be there were a lot of bugs in that awning, admittedly.
Sounds like instinct at play. Woodpecker found a food source, came back and it was dried up, and naturally, it started digging to find more where that came from.
But what do I know, I'm just Monday morning armchair ornithologist!
Re: Why woodpeckers can hammer without getting headaches (2022)
#27> The woodpecker’s head strikes with at least 1,000 times the force of gravity (1,000 g), yet the bird suffers no apparent harm. By contrast, any human who experienced a 100 g impact would surely die. Nope, not true. 100 g accelerations of the human head (not just the helmet) happen routinely in football. > VT researchers gather data with the Head Impact Telemetry System, which employs sensors and wireless transmitte…
the impulse (force/time) is probably a better measure
Re: Why woodpeckers can hammer without getting headaches (2022)
#28> The woodpecker’s head strikes with at least 1,000 times the force of gravity (1,000 g), yet the bird suffers no apparent harm. By contrast, any human who experienced a 100 g impact would surely die. Nope, not true. 100 g accelerations of the human head (not just the helmet) happen routinely in football. > VT researchers gather data with the Head Impact Telemetry System, which employs sensors and wireless transmitte…
Just watched the movie "Concussion" with Will Smith.
Sort of amazing the sort of punishment football players heads withstand... but they DO die much earlier in life with lots of complications.
"The woodpecker's tongue extends through the back of the mouth out of the nostril, encircling the entire cranium. It is the anatomical equivalent of a safety belt for its brain. Human beings? Not a single piece of our anatomy protects us from those types of collisions. A human being will get concussed at sixty G's."
also:
"The Cape gannet.
A diving bird capable of generating speeds
of up to 75 miles per hour,
turning itself into a missile
as it collides with the face of the sea.
The red-head woodpecker
can absorb a G-force of 1,000,
pecking a tree 12,000 times per day,
85 million times over its lifetime.
Bighorn sheep can generate..."
"Bennet."
"Okay, okay."Re: Why woodpeckers can hammer without getting headaches (2022)
#29> The woodpecker’s head strikes with at least 1,000 times the force of gravity (1,000 g), yet the bird suffers no apparent harm. By contrast, any human who experienced a 100 g impact would surely die. Nope, not true. 100 g accelerations of the human head (not just the helmet) happen routinely in football. > VT researchers gather data with the Head Impact Telemetry System, which employs sensors and wireless transmitte…
the impulse (force/time) is probably a better measure
Impulse isn't force over (divided by) time, it's the integral of force over (with respect to) time.
Re: Why woodpeckers can hammer without getting headaches (2022)
#30> The woodpecker’s head strikes with at least 1,000 times the force of gravity (1,000 g), yet the bird suffers no apparent harm. By contrast, any human who experienced a 100 g impact would surely die. Nope, not true. 100 g accelerations of the human head (not just the helmet) happen routinely in football. > VT researchers gather data with the Head Impact Telemetry System, which employs sensors and wireless transmitte…
the impulse (force/time) is probably a better measure
Its really a sound wave pulsing through the grey mush of each brain, so some measure of stress (force/area) or strain (differential displacement/area) might be the beast way to look at it. The damage might be done in shear where the center of the brain moves while the outside is stuck to the skull, but it would be really hard to measure that.
Maybe woodpecker brains are more free to wobble around inside their skulls so shear stresses and strains are lower than they are in people?