Life's Great Mysteries - Do woodpeckers get headaches from banging their heads all day?

Woodpeckers live pretty much everywhere in the world except Madagascar, Antarctica, and Australia and the surrounding islands, with more than 300 species worldwide. So, most people have seen these crazy birds banging their heads against trees like there’s no tomorrow. Why do they do it?

Three reasons. The first reason is to communicate to other woodpeckers, both to attract mates and to tell other woodpeckers this is their territory. This is called drumming, and it is the typical rapid series of hits that we usually hear from woodpeckers. Each species has a specific number of hits in the drumming roll, as well as a specific length of the roll, cadence, and other variables. This way, the birds can announce what species they are. Sometimes they even do this on houses with metal or plastic siding, simply because they like how loud it can be. While drumming, they hammer the tree up to 20 times per second, and during mating season, male woodpeckers make up to 12,000 hits per day.

The second reason is for hunting food. Woodpeckers are typically predators, feeding on insects and other small animals, and they often pound on the bark, or even burrow into soft trees with their beaks, to find these creatures.

The third reason is to excavate holes in trees to make their nests or to store food. In places where trees are in short supply, they will create cavities in large cactuses or even in vertical earth banks by rivers.

So, how do they do all this pounding without damaging their brains? Well, first, a millisecond before the bird’s beak hits the tree, thick muscles in the neck tighten, which causes the force to radiate down the neck muscles, thus protecting the skull. Woodpeckers also have some anatomical characteristics that help immensely. For example, woodpeckers have unusually small brains. Smaller brains have less mass, thus decreasing the chances of damage with each blow. Also, a woodpecker’s upper beak is not the same length as its lower beak, so only one beak hits the tree, softening each blow. Detailed scans show that woodpecker skulls are hard on the outside, with soft, spongy areas on the inside, concentrated where they can best cushion the brain.

A woodpecker’s brain fits tightly inside the skull, which keeps the brain from jiggling around. The brain is also oriented inside the skull to increase the area of contact when pecking, which further reduces stress on the brain. One researcher said the brain is “like a half orange with the flat side facing the front.”

So, these adaptations keep the woodpecker’s brain safe through all of that hammering.

Let’s end this head-splitting mystery with a smile: A woodpecker with a sore beak walks into a bar and asks, “Where is the bar tender?”

Here is a red-headed woodpecker that visited us a few months ago.