Red-naped Sapsucker. Photo by Matt McGillivray, CC_by

We’ve probably all seen woodpeckers, birds in the family Picidae that hammer on trees (and sometimes houses) to get food, create nest holes, or announce their territorial holdings. I’ve been a birdwatcher for decades, yet it never once occurred to me to wonder how they can stand all that pecking. You would think it would hurt and even cause brain damage.

But some scientists have noticed and have thought about what we could learn from woodpeckers to create machines and tools that can withstand those types of shocks. Here’s a video of a Pileated Woodpecker in the US to show how much shock these birds are subject to. There are two strategies on AskNature, one on how the head structures absorb shock (with a link to a product page) and another on how the body contributes to manage impacts. We recently found some interesting images on slideshare.net that show woodpecker morphology and an image showing how this could be applied to a hammer.

Woodpeckers are fun to watch because they are easy to find, sit still long enough for a good look, and have fascinating adaptations to their way of life. Besides the two mentioned above, they also have toes that allow them to cling to bark and support themselves, tail feathers that are stiff so they can support the bird as it pecks and drums, and a very long and sticky tongue that can reach inside beetle galleries under tree bark to extract juicy grubs.

Woodpecker using tongue to reach insects. Photo by Stig Nygaard, CC_by

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