…is to waste your time in a useless enterprise. But try telling that to a woodpecker. He’ll just go on banging his head against a tree 20 times a second up to 12000 times a day. Useless enterprise? Well, not if you want to eat or have a sheltered place to live or impress a mate or defend a territory. And it’s not really head-banging so much as pecking and drumming. But wait..why doesn’t this high velocity, forceful pecking cause a headache or even brain injury for a woodpecker? It sure would for a human. When each peck ends, the deceleration force is around 1000g’s. That force would turn a human brain to cookie dough. No wonder that safety engineers designing bike helmets are studying woodpeckers!

There must be something Darwinian going on here. First of all, F=ma. Force equals mass times acceleration (or deceleration). Oops, that’s Newton, not Darwin, but Newton comes first. Woodpeckers have tiny brains that weigh less than a tenth of an ounce, a tiny mass compared to a human brain resulting in a tiny force. Second - this is where Darwin comes in - the woodpecker’s skull is uniquely designed to protect its brain from trauma. Unlike humans, the woodpecker’s brain is not awash in cerebrospinal fluid in which it can bounce around, but instead it is enveloped in a cushion of small muscles that act like protective foam. Finally - more Darwin - there’s the hyoid bone. In most mammals including humans, the hyoid bone is tiny, almost vestigial, helping with some tongue movement and a clue to murder by strangulation when it is forcefully broken. In the woodpecker, however, the hyoid bone has grown so that from its anchor in the nose it divides in two and extends completely overtop of the skull and then returns to the back of the mouth where the tongue muscles attach to it. During pecking, those tongue muscles pull the hyoid bone against the skull causing it to act as a seatbelt for the woodpecker’s brain. It is also instrumental in extending the woodpecker’s long sticky tongue up to 4 inches to catch bugs in the bark of trees.

180 species of woodpeckers are found all over the world with 16 - 20 species in North America. They are non-migratory. Their zygodactyl feet (two toes extend forward and two extend backward) and their stiff tail feathers help them climb or descend vertically on tree trunks or cling in place while pecking or drumming. For a non-raptor, they have remarkably long talons.

Woodpeckers lack melodious songs, but have serious drumming skills most notable in the spring for attracting mates and declaring turf. Their drumming follows patterns that distinguish one species from another just as the songs of other birds do. Glenn Miller knew a few drummers in his career as a jazz orchestra leader and he wrote The Woodpecker Song based on an Italian melody and performed here by Kate Smith.