It was thought that spongy bone in woodpeckers’ heads cushioned their brains from hard knocks, but in fact their skulls are stiff like a hammer
They found that, in the milliseconds after a beak strike into the wood, the birds’ eyes and heads slowed down at essentially the same rate as the beaks did – meaning that the spongy bone in front of the eye wasn’t compressing, nor absorbing, the effects of the blow.
The team then created digital models of pecking woodpeckers to test what would happen if the spongy bone did absorb shock. While the cushioning would lead to less jarring for the brain, it also meant that the birds’ beaks couldn’t drive as deeply into the wood, says Van Wassenbergh. In fact, in order to get a deeper hit into the tree, the birds would have to work harder with even more powerful strikes of the head, in effect cancelling out any benefits of shock absorption.
“It’s just normal that a smaller organism can withstand these higher [forces],” says Van Wassenbergh, drawing a parallel with flies hitting windows at even higher forces: “They just take off and fly again.” The term “spongy bone” doesn’t mean that the bone is soft or can compress, he says. Rather, it indicates that the bone is porous and lightweight – which is critical for flying birds. “The bone is just strong enough for the function that it needs to do,” he says.
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