Most of us are well known for woodpeckers. These birds, flying from tree to tree for days, climb the trunk and smash bark and wood with their sharp beaks, looking for insect pests. This fractional knock was heard by everyone who was in the forest. Woodpeckers hammer a tree with such force that if any other bird were in their place, it would die, unable to stand even five minutes. But the heroes of this article cannot live otherwise.
In the article we will tell you what a woodpecker can die from.
What kind of birds are these?
A large group of climbing woodpeckers, one of the woodpeckers, is well known for its ability to sit on a vertical tree trunk to chisel wood, looking for beetles, insect larvae, termites and ants. These birds are not very good, although they fly fast. They have a straight and thin, but strong beak that looks like a small chisel and most often a colorful elegant plumage.
The size of woodpecker birds may vary depending on the species: from the smallest golden-faced representative weighing only 7 grams and body length 8 centimeters to a large Muller woodpecker. The weight of the latter is already 450 grams with a size of 50 centimeters. But these are the inhabitants of South Asia and America. And how do they live, from which the woodpeckers that live in the Russian expanse die (large variegated, small variegated, yellow, vertices, green and gray woodpeckers)?
Woodpecker does not hurt
The biggest surprise is the fact that a small bird per second makes about 20 hits on a tree trunk, and about 12 thousand per day. She throws her head away with great negative acceleration. In this case, the characteristic woodpeckle "trills", consisting of fractional strikes, can be quite long. After all, the bird uses them not only for food search: it is necessary for it during the mating season to communicate with the female and to warn possible competitors that this site is already occupied. By the way, the sound of a woodpecker is heard at a distance of one and a half kilometers.
It was established that the head of this feathered one experiences a load comparable to that exerted on the astronauts at the start of the spacecraft. With a little clarification - it is twice as much!
What do woodpeckers die from if the bird does not harm itself at all by hammering? And how does a bird withstand such a load?
In 2006, this natural phenomenon was explained to two ornithologists from the United States, who were even awarded for the opening of the Shnobelovskaya, that is, the Antinobelovskaya Prize. Despite these more than modest laurels, scientists were able to explain in detail the reason for the woodpecker resistance under such infernal loads.
Ornithologists have given several reasons explaining why the woodpecker's body does not suffer at all from its natural way of life. That is, if woodpeckers die from what, then not from knocking.
We can say that these birds have a kind of integrated security system.
Firstly, the woodpecker's beak is straight and solid. It touches the wood strictly perpendicularly, without vibrating from impact and without bending.
Secondly, the bird has a special cranial structure: the bones are separated from the brain by a thin, but viscous layer of intracranial fluid, which has the ability to absorb shock waves dangerous to the brain.
Woodpeckers have another important shock absorber. It is called a hyoid and is a cartilaginous hyoid formation that enters the nasopharynx and wraps around the skull.
The poultry bone system contains a lot of spongy substance - this is especially true for the skull. Such a nuance of the structure is characteristic, rather, for chicks than for adult birds, but it remains for woodpeckers all their lives. Thus, we won’t find the answer to the question “why woodpeckers die” in these details.
Vision of a bird does not suffer at all. With each hit on the tree trunk, the third eyelid (otherwise called the "blinking membrane") falls at the woodpecker, which protects the eye from sawdust flying when it hits.
How then to answer the question?
Why can woodpeckers die?
The average life expectancy of different species of woodpeckers is from 5 to 11 years. But not all of them live to an advanced age - because woodpeckers are full of enemies in their natural habitat.
They can be caught as prey by many birds of prey: falcons, owls, eagle owls and hawks. They can be attacked by any of the predatory animals, for example, marten, fox, lynx, ermine, and even a large snake. Woodpecker nests actively destroy squirrels and dormouse. Finally, the bird may die from disease or old age. But the concussion does not threaten the woodpecker.
That's how we found out what woodpeckers can die from.