In my third year of reporting on the coronavirus pandemic, I find woodpeckers, which can ram their heads against hard surfaces about 20 times a second, to be incredibly relatable. But the birds’ ...

Woodpeckers’ skulls aren’t built to absorb shock, but rather to deliver a harder and more efficient hit into wood. Woodpeckers hammer their beaks onto tree trunks to communicate, to look for food or ...

Scientists had long wondered how woodpeckers can repeatedly pound their beaks against tree trunks without doing damage to their brains. This led to the notion that their skulls must act like ...