Robert Clarkのインスタグラム(robertclarkphoto) - 12月2日 08時32分

Here’s something you didn’t know existed: ( and I didn't either until saw this specimen in a museum in Hamburg Germany), Woodpeckers have specifically designed beaks that allow their heads to sustain impacts some 1000 times the force of gravity as they chisel away are soft and hardwoods for their favorite quarry that lies beneath, which they capture with their specially designed tongue.

What you see in the image comes in two parts. The first that you’ll notice is the odd structure encircling the head and emerging out from inside of the bird’s beak. This is the woodpecker’s tongue, designed to flick out and into perforations in tree bark to pull. When the woodpecker is alive, this tongue is covered in minuscule barbs that pull their prey our of the hole, while the looping system acts as a sort of spring allowing the tongue to dart into a hole with precision and speed. Looping the entire tongue extension around their head allows them to have an elongated tongue without a lack of place to put the appendage.

The second component, which is that saving the woodpecker’s brain from distinct trauma, is that the lower beak deflects all the impact of the repeated strikes into the springlike structure and away from the braincase, meaning that the woodpecker can hammer into incredibly hard wood without jarring the brain inside its skull. I find this to be such an interesting adaptation because the woodpecker’s hunting method is pretty abnormal, and such an adaptation seems a bit excessive and odd in the face of evolution.

@ナショナルジオグラフィック @instituteartist @thephotosociety

#birds #woodpecker #evolution

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