Super Beak

SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

QUICK PECKS: The black woodpecker is able to strike and remove its beak from wood in the span of 50 milliseconds.

Woodpeckers can hammer their beaks against tree trunks up to 20 times per second. Yet, despite all that rapid drilling, the birds manage to avoid getting their beaks stuck in the wood. To find out how they do this, scientists at the University of Antwerp in Belgium studied high-speed videos of the black woodpecker. They discovered that, as it pecks, the bird moves the top and bottom of its beak independently in opposite directions. “First, the upper beak is removed, creating a bit of free space,” says Sam Van Wassenbergh, a biologist who worked on the study. “Then the woodpecker can pull its bottom beak out with no effort.”

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