by Apeksha Srivastava (ComSciCon-Virginia Tech 2023)

I remember seeing a woodpecker in my grandma’s home when I was around seven or eight. It happily pecked at a wooden pillar in the garden with its beak. “This is what they do all the time! It is their natural behavior,” my grandma said. After a long time, early this year, when we had to choose topics for an assignment as a part of our PhD coursework, I suddenly remembered woodpeckers again. I could immediately picture them pecking at trees with their beaks. Belonging to the bird family Picidae, woodpeckers are found worldwide. They are famous for tapping their beaks against hard surfaces many times a day for several reasons: finding and storing food, making nesting holes, for sexual display, and communication. 

You might think, the forceful impact of the beaks on tough surfaces, followed by the abrupt slowing down of their heads, could hurt their brains! But surprisingly, there is no proof that woodpeckers experience brain injury from this tapping. Are these birds immune to brain damage? If yes, how?

... Read more about Peckings Cause Brain Damage in Woodpeckers: Nay or Yay?