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Woodpecker pecking: how woodpeckers avoid brain injury

Author(s)
Gibson, Lorna
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.

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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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Abstract
Woodpeckers are capable of repeated pecking on a tree at remarkably high decelerations (on the order of 10 000 m s−2 or 1000 g). In this paper, I re-examine previous studies of pecking and scaling effects in brain injury. I find that there are three keys to woodpeckers' ability to withstand high decelerations: their small size, which reduces the stress on the brain for a given acceleration; the short duration of the impact, which increases the tolerable acceleration; and the orientation of the brain within the skull, which increases the area of contact between the brain and the skull.
Date issued
2006-06
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/70094
Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Journal
Journal of Zoology
Publisher
Wiley Blackwell (Blackwell Publishing)
Citation
Gibson, L. J. “Woodpecker Pecking: How Woodpeckers Avoid Brain Injury.” Journal of Zoology 270.3 (2006): 462–465. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. © 2006 The Zoological Society of London
Version: Final published version
ISSN
0952-8369
1469-7998

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