Posted on 02/07/2011 12:56:13 PM PST by LibWhacker
When aircrash investigators of the future retrieve a flight recorder from the wreckage of a plane they may have the golden-fronted woodpecker, Melanerpes aurifons, to thank for the survival of the flight data. The reason? A shock absorber inspired by the bird's ability to withstand severe deceleration.
A woodpecker's head experiences decelerations of 1200g as it drums on a tree at up to 22 times per second. Humans are often left concussed if they experience 80 to 100g, so how the woodpecker avoids brain damage was unclear.
So Sang-Hee Yoon and Sungmin Park of the University of California, Berkeley, studied video and CT scans of the bird's head and neck and found that it has four structures that absorb mechanical shock.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Now that is useful research, as opposed to redundant polling research by universities concluding that boys are different from girls or kleptos tend to steal stuff.
So Al Gore could survive what; 2,500-3,00 g without serious injury?
Leonardo da Vinci
Hmm, kind of sounds like it was designed that way, doesn’t it???
Intelligent design.
.
Woodpecker’s self-designed head inspires shock absorbers
Someday you might be able to walk around on the freeway without fear of being hit by a semi-truck, or jump out of an airplane without a parachute, etc.
Fantasy maybe, but I'd wager in time scientists will be able to improve greatly upon the woodpecker's natural design.
On that note...
woodpeckers, agreed amazing creatures, but these varmints are literally destroying my house! Every spring, one or two find a spot under the eaves of my roof and start hammering away, making huge holes that i have to patch up. Any suggestions by anyone on how to get rid or prevent them? I just can’t put shiny hanging objects all over the place, which is the only thing I have been able to do.
Easy. Tinfoil house.
Some sort of bird-eating cat?
Air rifle?
My Marlin .22 Mag puts a hole in ‘em even a woodpecker would admire.
A few years ago we were getting a lot of woodpeckers attacking our house. But I couldn't figure out where exactly they were pecking. I couldn't see any damage. And everytime I heard them and went outside to check it out, they'd fly away. Then, just by chance, our shake roof happened to need replacing and we choose composite shingles. Haven't had a woodpecker here since, and that was five years ago.
Dunno about the tinfoil. I think I have one with a scrambled brain, because he’s pecking furiously at my garage’s metal roof. I’m wandering out there of a morning, nice and quiet and peaceful, cartoon bubbles popping before my eyes, and this little bugger cuts loose and scares the pluperfect poop out of me. Sounds like a riveter. He’s torn swaths of bark off this cedar tree outside my window, too. I’m thinking...napalm...
Woddpecker’s ‘accidentally evolved head...
All this stuff is just a cosmic accident, right? And in the end it won’t matter because in a billion years the sun will be so big earth will be burned up and maybe even sucked into the expanding sun.
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