Skip to content

Main Navigation

  • Home
  • The Ig Nobel Prizes
    • 2022 Ceremony
    • About the Igs
    • 24/7 Lectures
    • The Ig® Archive
    • Past Ig Winners
    • Donate to the Igs
  • Publications
    • Magazine (Annals of Improbable Research)
    • Newsletter (mini-AIR)
    • Classics
  • Podcasts & Videos
    • Podcast
    • Improbable TV
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
  • Press Clips
  • Luxuriant Hair Clubs for Scientists
  • Store
  • Info / Contact Us
  • About Marc Abrahams
This is Improbable Too
Shop the Improbable Research Store
Get books about improbable research and the Ig Nobel Prize

Tag: woodpeckers

Woodpeckers don’t get headaches. They give them.

January 4, 2017 Marc Abrahams

“This Woodpecker Will Drill Into Your Skull And Eat Your Brains—If You’re a Baby Dove,” explains an article by Jason Bittel in Smithsonian magazine. It says: In 2015, Harold Greeney [pictured here, horizontal] trained his camera on a mourning dove nest stitched into the crook of a cactus. As an ornithologist, Greeney studies the love […]

Ig Nobel, Research Newsheadaches, woodpeckers

Dr. Schwab explains why woodpeckers don’t get headaches

October 28, 2014 Marc Abrahams

Dr. Ivan Schwab explains why woodpeckers don’t get headaches, in this Discovery Channel video: He explains it in more detail, in this TEDx Talk: Dr. Schwab, of the University of California Davis, and the late Philip R.A. May of the University of California Los Angeles, were awarded the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize for ornithology, for exploring […]

Ig Nobel, Research Newsbrain, football, headaches, woodpeckers

Woodpeckers, too, can be confused

February 14, 2011 Martin Gardiner

When woodpeckers drill into a tree trunk, their skulls can experience mechanical shocks in excess of 1,200 g – hundreds of times stronger than the g-forces which astronauts might experience – and yet the birds do not appear to be in any way damaged, and are apparently immune to headaches. But what would happen to […]

Arts and Sciencewoodpeckers

Woodpeckers – the shock potential

February 11, 2011 Martin Gardiner

“A woodpecker is known to drum the hard woody surface of a tree at a rate of 18 to 22 times per second with a deceleration of 1200 g, yet with no sign of blackout or brain damage.” Suggesting, to some, the question : “How does the bird strike its beak against a tree repeatedly […]

Ig Nobel, Research Newswoodpeckers
Buy This Issue
Subscribe
  • Arts and Science
  • Boys Will Be Boys
  • Extra-Improbable columns
  • Ig Nobel
  • Improbable Investigators
  • Improbable Sex
  • Improbable TV
  • LFHCfS (Hair Clubs)
  • Magazine (AIR)
  • mini-AIR
  • Podcast
  • Research News

"The benefits of carrying rhinos upside down and other absurd investigations of 2021" @LaVanguardia https://t.co/kCqhRAFlLU

— Improbable Research (@improbresearch) December 31, 2021

Subscribe to MINI-AIR

loader

Follow AIR & Ig folk on Twitter and Facebook!

AIR personnel
Improbable Research
Marc Abrahams
Robin Abrahams
Fiona Barclay
Gary Dryfoos
Rose Fox
Martin Gardiner
Erwin Kompanje
Julia Lunetta
Gwinyai Masukume
Kees Moeliker
Mason Porter
Sid Rodrigues
Geri Sullivan

Ig Nobel Prize winners
Dan Ariely
Craig Bennett
Elena Bodnar
Glenda Browne
John Culvenor
Deepak Chopra
Theodore Gray
Jasmuheen
Karl Kruszelnicki
Donatella Marazziti
Dan Meyer
Geoffrey Miller
Sun Myung Moon
Gauri Nanda
Dr. Nakamats
Ron Popeil
Andrea Rapisarda
Dorian Raymer
Daniel Simons
Richard Stephens
Brian Wansink
Anna Wilkinson
Philip Zimbardo
Rolf Zwaan


Copyright ©2023 : .