A woodpecker s brain takes a big hit with every peck: study wfae.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wfae.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Scientists have found that woodpeckers avoid getting their beaks stuck in wood by moving the top and bottom halves of their bills independently - behaving exactly like an electric drill.
Biologists at the University of Antwerp in Belgium discovered that the woodpecker gets stuck in the tree trunk and then detaches itself by flicking its head - all in the space of 50 milliseconds.
Lead researcher Sam Van Wassenbergh made videos of two birds from separate zoos which found that the creatures pecked at trees at a speed of about seven metres per second.
When the video was played in slow motion, the scientists found that the birds would rotate their heads one way, twisting the top of the beak by a few degrees and then turn the bottom half in the other direction.
If you were to hammer a nail into wood, you could have a hard time getting it out again. And anyone who has watched a woodpecker bashing furiously at a tree trunk may well wonder why its sharp beak