> 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 transmitters in helmets. "We see 100-g impacts all the time," says Stefan Duma, director of the university's Center for Injury Biomechanics, "and several over 150 g's."
In generally, using g's (acceleration) to measure impact severity is fraught because the damage is also highly dependent on the during of the impact. Just a few g's is enough to kill if sustained for long enough. Fighter pilots can handle 8-9 gees for a second or two, but will pass out after longer. But a human can handle way more from brief (sub second) impacts.
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."
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?
I don't know how they work internally, but I can say that power hammers used for blacksmithing sound similar to the woodpecker in the video, only much slower. A couple hard, fast hits with absurd force before slowing down and stopping.
I'm guessing the woodpecker behaves that way because it's putting momentum into the hitting, even if that doesn't totally make sense in my head. When hammering on something, it's easiest to let the gravity do most of the work and focus your effort on aiming and raising the hammer, so you naturally have 1-2 hits that are solely momentum based at the end.
The woodpecker is horizontal, though, - not pecking in line with gravity - so my thought process isn't a perfect analogue. But if their tongue works like a spring then I can imagine it making sense.
They definitely don't peck this fast when digging for food or making holes - those are slower more powerful strikes. The fasy drums are for the purpose of making noise.
I'm somewhat convinced woodpeckers are smart, conniving creatures.
I always kept suet out, and they love it. All hours of the day, hanging upside down eating at it.
But, if I ever forgot to replace it when it ran empty, I'd be awaken at the crack of dawn by a woodpecker hammering the window awning. Only when the suet was empty.
Maybe it's coincidence, but I like to believe he was trying to remind me they needed more suet in the most annoying way.
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!
I guess we had a woodpecker that just hated us for some reason a few years back. We live in a log home but this bird decided it had to hammer on the metal gutters first thing in the morning. Sounded like a machine gun.
I believe it. I once had a bluejay that frequented my birdfeeder and would hammer on my bedroom window whenever the feeder ran dry. He'd peck at the glass so hard I thought it might break.
Had 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.
Every now and then one will get on my chimney. It will peck on something metal and the sound echos down and comes out my fireplace. It makes a really cool sound.
For the first time in my 36 years, I saw one out the window Saturday morning after I woke up. I felt like I was in the presence of a celebrity, and found myself semi-aghast at how excited I was. I tried really hard to get a video but he flew off. For those 15-20 seconds, watching him work was a treat. Life's simple pleasures I guess.
I was inspired by your comment and started to look into this. We have kestrels that congregate around the house that I think would ravage the suet but I may try anyway.
For all the times that I’ve seen woodpeckers at work. I only see them banging as hard as they could during mating season, as to make as much sound as possible to signal vitality. All other times I’ve seen them at work they’re calmly chipping away at a tree like a woodworker with a chisel, and no way near there max strength. Almost all articles I read only seem to mention that a woodpecker hammers as hard as possible all dag long which just isn’t true.
Also for anyone hearing a woodpecker banging metal, it’s the sound signaling during mating season. Dampen the metal and he’ll find another place.
Ah, I mentioned in another comment that we had a woodpecker do this at our house, a log home but it went after the metal gutters. That explanation makes a lot of sense.
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.
Not unusual... I have two metal towers running through the back third of my property. The flickers love to bang on them, it really amplifies the sound. I assumed it was more a mating/attention thing.
Yeah I think they're hammering on some component of my metal roof as it has a very metallic sound. I love birds in general but have considered loading my 22 with bird shot on multiple occasions when they wake me out of a deep sleep.
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 transmitters in helmets. "We see 100-g impacts all the time," says Stefan Duma, director of the university's Center for Injury Biomechanics, "and several over 150 g's."
https://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/sports/a2954/4212...
In generally, using g's (acceleration) to measure impact severity is fraught because the damage is also highly dependent on the during of the impact. Just a few g's is enough to kill if sustained for long enough. Fighter pilots can handle 8-9 gees for a second or two, but will pass out after longer. But a human can handle way more from brief (sub second) impacts.