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Index of Subjects Hi, The info, and the article, are intreresting, but not really new. I can remember back in the 1960s or early '70s there was a paper in The Lancet, and quite a series of follow up letters, talking about the same subject and whether it might lead to improved helmet design etc. One of the issues was whether human sinuses, which have never been shown to serve any useful purpose besides getting clogged up and infected from time to time, might be some sort of ancestral evolution of stuctures such as those present in woodpecker skulls, which at one time might indeed have served a more evolutionary useful purpose. I seem to recall that a motor cycle helmet was actually designed, on the principles of woodpecker skulls, but people thought it would never catch on because the beak would never appeal aesthetically to bikers! Meanwhile, let's hope that some of those Red-bellies stick around and nest in NS. Richard On 4/12/12, Blake Maybank <bmaybank@gmail.com> wrote: > *Hard Headedness* > > "New research into the skulls of woodpeckers has shown just how it is that > they don't suffer brain injury when pecking away at a tree. They can hit > the bark of a tree with a force greater than 1,000 times that of gravity > (1,000 G's). Previous studies had shown that thick neck muscles diffuse the > blows and a third inner eyelid keeps the eye from "popping" out, but it > wasn't understood how their brain could survive the forces in play. > > Thanks to new research at Beihang University in Beijing and the Wuhan > University of Technology, it has been shown that there is a thick bone > which cushions the brain. Not only that, but the skull surrounding the > brain is made up of a thick, spongy plate like bone. There are also a > number of "beam like" structures providing a mesh like structure, giving > the bone it's sponge like structure." > > For more information: > http://www.livescience.com/19586-woodpecker-skull-concussions.html > > > -- > Blake Maybank <bmaybank@gmail.com> > White's Lake, Nova Scotia > My Blog: *CSI: Life* <http://blakemaybank.com> > -- ################# Dr.R.B.Stern, P.O. Box 300, Port Williams, N.S., Canada, B0P 1T0 Richard Stern, Port Williams, NS, Canada sternrichard@gmail.com ###################
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