Fun Fact: A woodpecker’s tongue is so long that it wraps around its skull to protect its brain while it is hammering away at a tree or other hard surfaces. This, combined with other factors such as: super strong neck muscles, plates of spongey bone in the skull that act like a football helmet, and a very small amount of cerebrospinal fluid surrounding their brain, all help to stop a woodpecker scrambling its brain while pecking away with a force of over 1000g.
A special eye protein is helping birds to “see” Earth’s magnetic field! If that’s not cool, I don’t know what is.
The ability to see Earth’s magnetic field, known as magnetoreception, relies on the presence of specifically the blue wavelength of light. The complex process involves “radical” intermediate molecules which are sensitive to Earth’s magnetic field. The Earth’s magnetic field, as it relates to the direction the bird is facing, could alter the intermediate radical molecules differently, giving the bird a sense for where it is facing in relation to the Earth’s magnetic field.
While the exact way birds visualize Earth’s magnetic field is part of further investigation, scientists believe the Cry4 protein acts as sort of a filter over the bird’s vision. This filter would allow birds to see a sort of compass of the Earth and direct their migratory flights accordingly.
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