How amazing is the woodpecker's tongue? It became Leonardo da Vinci's last research object

Is Leonardo da Vinci familiar to everyone? You will definitely say who doesn't know him! A painter, scientist, and inventor during the Italian Renaissance, modern scholars call him "the most perfect representative of the Renaissance", a unique all-rounder in human history. His "Mona Lisa's Smile" and "The Last Supper" are among the world's few precious treasures. How can anyone not be familiar with such a person!

So what was the last research he conducted before his death?

I guess most people don’t know this! Let me reveal the answer directly: it’s the woodpecker’s tongue!!!

Leonardo da Vinci once set himself the task of "How to describe the tongue of a woodpecker?" in his notes.

What is so special about the woodpecker's tongue that made Leonardo da Vinci so obsessed? Don't worry. Before you learn about the tongue, let's follow Pang Ke to see what the woodpecker looks like.

The Picidae family belongs to the order Picidae of the class Aves in the traditional classification system of birds. There are about 270 species in the world and about 29 species in China. The main species are the green woodpecker (Chinese name: gray-headed green woodpecker) and the spotted woodpecker (Chinese name: great spotted woodpecker).

Grey-headed Woodpecker

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Although the woodpecker's body is small, it contains amazing power. On June 8, 1995, when space enthusiasts around the world were looking forward to the launch of the "Discovery" space shuttle, triggering a new round of "space fever", NASA announced to the world that the flight was postponed for some reason. The reason for the postponement was even more surprising: it was because the insulation foam plastic on the surface of the "Discovery" fuel tank was pecked by the woodpecker, leaving dozens of holes with a diameter of 6-10 mm. This shows how terrifying the "pecking power" of the woodpecker is!

Scientists once used high-speed movie cameras to take pictures of woodpeckers pecking at trees, and discovered some amazing data: woodpeckers can peck at trees up to 12,000 times a day, sometimes up to 20 times per second, and the speed of their heads when pecking is 555 meters per second. Due to the fast pecking speed, the impact force on the head when pecking is equal to 1,000 times the gravity, which is equivalent to 250 times the pressure an astronaut experiences when taking off on a rocket.

The fact that the woodpecker was not injured at such a high speed and endured such a huge force attracted the attention of scientists, who conducted in-depth research.

Research has found that the woodpecker's tongue is responsible for this amazing feature! The tongue of this "firecracker-like device" can actually extend out of the beak up to 12 centimeters long! It's longer than its body! Let's do the math. If our tongue is longer than our body, it would be really... scary...

What does a woodpecker's tongue look like? Let's take a look at the picture first.

The woodpecker's tongue wraps around the skull

Did you see that? The tongue of a woodpecker is not just the part sticking out of the beak, there is a longer part inside the body. The point is, its tongue actually goes around the skull!!!

Do you think that a tongue that wraps around the skull is weird? No, what is really weird is the entire growth path of the tongue. Let's feel it together: it extends from the back of the upper jaw, passes through the right nostril, forks into two, then wraps around the upper and back of the skull, passes through the sides of the neck and the lower jaw, and merges into one tongue in the mouth.

Woodpecker Tongue

Isn't this bizarre? And this is why woodpeckers don't suffer from concussions!

Dr. Ivan R Schwab and Dr. Philip May of the University of California, Davis, won the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize in Ornithology for their analysis of "Why Woodpeckers Don't Get Concussions." The analysis of the "tongue shock absorber" is as follows: The tongue of a woodpecker has excellent deformability and toughness. When it is wrapped around the skull, it is equivalent to a perfect shock absorber (or seat belt) for the brain. This shock absorber can absorb a large part of the vibration generated by pecking, protecting the woodpecker's brain and preventing concussions.

Of course, there are many other reasons why woodpeckers don't suffer from concussions, besides their tongues: ingenious skull structure, proper body proportions, and precise angle control capabilities. But using the tongue as a shock absorber is also a stroke of genius in the history of evolution!

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