Why Don't Woodpeckers Get Brain Damage? Research Presents an Intriguing New Hypothesis

Forced to spend their days slamming their tiny skulls into the sides of trees in search of buried morsels, woodpeckers should have evolved a trick or two to avoid brain damage. So you'd think. A new study on woodpecker biomechanics has cast doubt on speculations that the small chisel-headed bird avoids turning its brain to mush through fancy shock-absorbing adaptations.