It is not unusual to find instances where science has turned to nature for inspiration. The invention of airplanes, for example, is probably the most quintessential illustration of this phenomenon. Humans, envious of birds’ ability to fly, would study them relentlessly trying to discover the secret of these tiny creatures. If you look at pictures of the flying machines that existed before the Wright Brothers’ era, you will see a bunch of weird apparatuses whose structures reveal the heavy reliance on birds’ anatomy in developing the invention. Mind you, the machines look more like ugly bats than like birds, but that is just a matter of aesthetics.
In fact, this form of human pseudo plagiarism of nature’s frameworks has now become a science in itself, called biomimicry (from the Greek bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate). This new science has created really interesting things through observation and imitation of nature, and it has expanded into different branches one of which is biomimetic architecture. A pretty cool example of what this branch of science has developed is the Eastgate Centre in Zimbabwe: a so-called green building whose structure resembles that of the mounds of termites. The result is that the building uses only 10% of the energy that a building of similar size partly because it no longer needs air conditioner to be cooled down.
In view of all this piracy, it should not be surprising to hear that scientists have now turned to woodpeckers to better understand concussions and how to prevent them. Yet, hearing about this for the first time causes some trepidation as to the kind of insight this study might offer. However, a quick Internet search reveals that this is not an unusual idea, nor is it novel. Scientific studies on the ability of woodpeckers to withstand head impact date back to 1964, when biological scientist Walter Bock, from Columbia University, conducted a study on the cranial kinesis of birds.
The interest of scientist on woodpeckers, of course, originates from the observation that these little birds can tap trees eternally without sustaining any injuries, while far fainter hits can cause serious injuries in humans. As the blog Science-Based Life explains, “a woodpecker’s head experiences decelerations of 1200g as it drums on a tree at up to 22 times per second” while humans “are often left concussed if they experience 80 to 100g.” Just to give you a better idea of what a deceleration of 1200g feels like, the blog says that such force would be equivalent to coming to a complete stop from 26,000 miles per hour over one second.
The topic of concussions among players of contact sports has increased in relevance in recent years. Last year, a class action lawsuit on behalf of a group of retired players was filed against the NFL. In 1994, the league funded a committee to study the issue of head injuries among its players. The plaintiffs allege that the NFL, through this committee, knew about the effects of concussions and chose not reveal this information. They claim that the NFL engaged in fraudulent and negligent conduct by creating bogus research supporting their claim that there was no conclusive evidence linking brain injuries and degenerative brain disease.
I first learned about these studies from an interview of Dr. Gregory Myer from the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre. According to Dr. Myer, the solution to avoiding concussions is not so much in developing better protective technology. In his opinion, “the key to beating the concussion crisis lies in dealing with what’s happening inside the skull, not outside of it.” Given that the brain is not tightly compressed inside the skull, any hit a person receives moves the brain around causing it to bruise. Because of the observation that helmets do not do much to protect athletes, Dr. Myer turned to woodpeckers and bighorn sheep as possible leads to making brains sturdier.
Dr. Myer’s analysis of these two kinds of animals suggested that their brains are “naturally protected with mechanisms that slow the return of blood from the head to the body.” It is this increase in blood volume, he says, what fills their brains’ vascular tree, creating a “Bubble Wrap” effect.
Dr. Myer hypothesized that higher altitude would increase the volume in the cerebral venous system, creating a snugger fit inside the skull that protects the athletes from sustaining concussions. He then conducted a study involving high school football players playing at various altitudes and found that those players who played at higher altitudes sustained a 30 percent reduction in total concussion incidence.
But before Dr. Myer, other scientists have studied woodpeckers in the context of sport-induced concussions. In 2011, the Toronto Star published an article about a study conducted by Yubo Fan, a bioengineer at Beijing’s Beihang University. This study revealed that there are three features of the anatomy of woodpeckers’ heads that protect them from brain injuries. One of them is the shape of their beaks that directs the impact away from the brain. The second feature is elastic materials in their heads that increase the resilience of their skulls. Finally, woodpeckers have evolved a unique bone that goes around their skull completely covering their brains. It is this bone that keeps the brain in place while the head is in motion. As stated above, injuries are the result of brain movement inside the skull. Finding a way to keep the brain in place is key to decreasing injuries. Using this last feature as a model, Fan is hoping to develop a new generation of helmets.
Although all these data is fascinating and sounds very hopeful it does not seem likely to lead to a solution just yet. Dr. Charles Tator, a Toronto neurologist, also interviewed by the Star is sceptical of the benefit that a helmet with woodpecker-like features may have. Like Dr. Myer, Dr. Tator says that the solution is not in keeping the head in place. The problem is finding a way to keep “the brain within from bouncing around in reaction to an impact.”
In the end, it seems to me like these very attractive features of woodpeckers’ heads are nothing else but the result of evolution. Repeated banging of their heads eventually led woodpeckers to morphological change. This means that, in order to develop concussion-resistant heads, we would have to start banging our heads repeatedly until our brains adapt and change. Of course, the evolution of inherited characteristics occurs over successive generations, meaning that our generation could not see humans with woodpecker-like heads. Then again, the dream of one day being able to fly did not materialize in a generation’s time.