Woodpecker hammering is a full-body affair

Hidden beneath all their rum-pum-pumming, woodpeckers are quietly grunt-grunt-grunting.

The birds exhale with each strike, much like a tennis pro groaning through a stroke. Elaborate coordination between those breaths and muscles across the body keep their hammering at a perfectly consistent rate, researchers report November 6 in Journal of Experimental Biology.

Research into the extraordinary capabilities of woodpeckers — who can strike hundreds of times per minute at forces 20 to 30 times their body weight — has largely focused on how they’re able to percuss without getting concussed. The new analysis simply asks how, at all?

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