We Can Experience Concussion on Collision but Not For Woodpeckers
Concussion is one condition that is common with players of American Football and this occurs from the collision of human heads against themselves in helmets but then playing football isn't the only reason why a person can have concussion, we can also get it from hitting our heads on hard surfaces which causes our brain to shake.
Compared to the human's brain and having concussion, woodpeckers do not have concussion. If you have tried to cut down a tree or divide a log of wood with an axe, you can tell that it is a very difficult task and woods are hard but for a woodpecker which is a bird that 5 times smaller than a kite, it does the job of hammering a tree 20 times a seconds, ten thousand times a day with its beak. If humans were to do this, then it will be smashing our heads against a tree which no one should try but doing this regularly will mean we would end up with concussion, and possibly CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) but why don't woodpeckers have concussion?
https://s3.animalia.bio/animals/photos/full/original/white-headed-woodpecker-3.webp
animalia.bio
We have seen that most times, people do not die from the height of a fall, they most time die from the stop from the fall because it comes with a hit and a series of thing. When a car moving at speed comes to a rest from possibly an accident, the car stops but the body doesn't come to a rest and this is what causes the brain to shake inside the skull leading to a concussion.
The Skull is delicate but strong at the same time, but the brain inside is squishy and looks like a blob of jelly floating in a liquid inside a container. So when there is a quick stop, the brain hit the sides of the skull, damaging some neurons leading to concussion. When this happens, the squished brain is forced to deform and tear nerve cells as well as damage neurons leading to the inability to communicate with themselves. When people have concussion, they might not feel dizzy and not able to remember things but this can lead to CTE when it happens over a long time. With CTE caused by repeated impact, patients can suffer from memory loss, Confusion, depression, aggression, suicidality, and parkisonism.
Woodpeckers are designed to peck woods as they have characteristics that help them with it. This characteristics includes spongy skull bones, and a special eyelid that closes before the beak impact on the tree. They can burrow into tree for shelter or for food purposes and they use their tongue which is longer than their beak to suck up the food but when they aren't sucking where do they keep the rest of the tongue.
Similar to humans, birds have a hyoid bone and although our is beneath the tongue, that of a woodpecker is at the back of its mouth, all around its skull, and ends up between its eye. This is where the tongue stays, and scientists believes that this serves as a shock-absorber when they are pecking woods.
But this isn't enough to keep a woodpecker from having a concussion. Another we need to look at is how our brain is placed and where it hits when there is a collision. Looking at impact injury, we need to consider how much force is being applied to the area, because the human brain hits a small area when it collides with the skull in a forward/backward movement but the brain of the woodpecker has a larger surface when colliding with the skull, and unlike human brain, the brain of a woodpecker is tightly packed, which means it doesn't float around.
Scale is another reason why woodpeckers do the pecking of wood without a concussion. The brain of a woodpecker is small with a small brain area to absorb larger impact like humans, but it is lighter than the brain of humans making it easy to be able to take impact while humans cannot take such impact. In simple terms our brain wasn't built for collision of any type as it could lead to brain damage.
Read More
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2987636/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/head-banging
https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/77/1/54/2930559
https://www.science.org/content/article/contrary
https://academy.allaboutbirds.org/built-to-peck-how-woodpeckers-avoid-brain-injury/
https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1
https://www.phys.ufl.edu/courses/phy3221/spring10/HaldaneRightSize.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4324991/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3202538/
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