A woodpecker’s tongue can reach one-third of its body length. This long tongue wraps around the bird’s skull, acting as a built-in helmet to absorb and redistribute forceful impacts. Different ...

Could woodpecker skulls hold the secret to mitigating brain damage in humans? Since the 1970s, scientists have asked this question, researching the industrious bird's skull and brain in a bid to ...

Imagine sprinting full-speed into a solid oak tree at 15 miles per hour — and then doing it again and again, 20 times per second. For almost any vertebrate, this would be fatal — but for a woodpecker, ...