Have you ever seen a woodpecker and wondered how he can repeatedly hit his beak against wood without injuring himself?
The woodpecker is an excellent example of how we just take things as they are without really thinking about how they work. When I take the time to look to more closely I’m always astonished that I could have ever believed in evolution.
Let’s take a little time now and have a closer look at how wonderfully designed the woodpecker is!
The woodpecker pecks wood at a rate of 15-16 times a second! This is a rate of fire twice as fast as a machine gun, meaning their heads travel twice the speed of a bullet. This force of stress on the woodpecker's head is equivalent to more than 250 times the force an astronaut experiences when taking off in a rocket.
So how does the woodpecker's brain and beak survive the pecking? Well, he’s been designed with five amazing safety features:
1) The woodpecker's skull is extra reinforced with bone.
2) The woodpecker's bill is stronger than most birds and this keeps its head and beak from being smashed to bits.
3) In most birds, the beak is joined to the cranium which surrounds the brain. But the woodpecker's beak is separated by a sponge-like tissue and this acts as a shock absorber which scientists say is far better than anything man has ever created!
4) The woodpecker also has special muscles that pull the braincase away from its beak every time it pecks.
5) And finally, for extra protection, the woodpecker also has neck muscles that keep its head perfectly straight. This is extremely important because if the woodpecker's head is even slightly off its brain would rip right off its skull.
Again, five safety features just so when the woodpecker pecks its beak, skull and brain aren't damaged.
Since evolution states that there is no intelligent design and small changes occur over large periods of time (millions of years) how could the woodpecker live to the next evolutionary stage without having all these safety features present and functioning at the same time?
How could this very complex system ever randomly evolve?
And that’s another fun and interesting fact! 🙂
Angela Grover
Author, It's Time To Fight
Founder of Sanctification Day By Day
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