why don't woodpeckers get concussions.

A woodpecker's head can stop with a jolt far beyond what's thought to concuss a person, and it keeps hammering all day. For years, people assumed its skull worked like a built-in helmet, with spongy bone soaking up each blow. High-speed video showed that isn't true. The best explanation is much simpler: a woodpecker's brain is tiny. A woodpecker brain weighs about 2.5 grams. Ours weighs about 1,400 grams and is roughly seven or eight times longer. When a head stops suddenly, the pressure inside the brain depends on how hard the stop is and on how long the brain is. So a tiny brain feels far less pressure from the same jolt. In a 2022 study, even the strongest pecks measured made less pressure inside a woodpecker's brain than a human brain gets in the mildest concussion. Also in this video: why woodpeckers peck at all, the body parts built for the job (feet, a stiff tail, a third eyelid and a tongue that wraps around the skull), a 2018 study that found protein buildup in woodpecker brains, and the engineers who copied the woodpecker to protect electronics. 0:00 Why don't woodpeckers get concussions? 0:43 The jolt 1:51 Why peck at all 2:51 The built-in toolkit 4:04 The cushion idea 4:55 The 2022 high-speed test 6:12 Size is the secret 7:39 Not completely unharmed? 8:34 Engineers copied the woodpecker 9:42 The answer Simple questions. Surprising answers. That's Odd Little Why. Sources: Physics Today, "Why woodpeckers don't get concussions" (2024): https://physicstoday.aip.org/quick-study/w... Van Wassenbergh et al., Current Biology (2022): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.05.052 Cornell Lab Bird Academy, "Built to Peck" (Lorna Gibson, MIT): https://academy.allaboutbirds.org/built-to... Audubon (2022): https://www.audubon.org/magazine/new-study... Farah et al., PLOS ONE (2018): https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?... National Wildlife Federation (2014): https://blog.nwf.org/2014/12/8-wonky-and-w... Bay Nature (2009): https://baynature.org/articles/natures-saf... Popular Science (2011): https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/... #woodpecker #science #animals #english