While reading about the government wasting money on things like robotic squirrels, it reminded me of the woodpeckers. Did they ever find out why woodpeckers don’t get headaches?

Yes, they did.

And Ivan Schwab, an ophthalmologist at the University of California, Davis, in 2006 received an Ig Nobel award — a parody of the Nobels — for his research on the subject.

In a paper published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology in 2002, Schwab reported on his research into why the pileated woodpecker doesn’t suffer from head trauma.

According to the paper, the bird — a “crow-sized, furtive, and wary woodpecker” — can strike a tree as many as 20 times per second with a force that’s equal “to striking a wall at 16 miles an hour — face first — each time.”

“To equip the bird for its ecological niche, evolution has provided the woodpecker with a thick bony skull with relatively spongy bone … and cartilage at the base of the mandible to partially cushion the incessant blows,” Schwab writes.

“Inside the skull, there is almost no cerebrospinal fluid in a very small subarachnoid space. The mandibles are attached to the skull by powerful muscles that contract a millisecond before strike, creating a tight, but cushioned structure at the moment of impact and distributing the force of the impact to the base and posterior aspects of the skull, thus bypassing the brain.”

Additionally, the paper says, in the instant before a strike, the bird’s nictitating membranes cover its eyes, protecting them from flying debris and acting as “a ‘seat belt’ to restrain the eyes from quite literally ‘popping out of its head.’ ”

The robotic squirrel the reader refers to was created as part of a National Science Foundation-funded study of rattlesnakes and predator-prey interaction.

“The robotic squirrel’s body is made from taxidermic skin, and it has a realistic smell because it is stored in squirrel bedding when off-duty. …,” reads the NSF’s website.

“Because the robotic squirrel’s behavior may easily be manipulated in ways that a live squirrel’s behavior cannot be, it may be used to help test the responses of rattlesnakes to various squirrel behaviors that would otherwise be impossible to produce and observe.”

Online: http://bjo.bmj.com/content/86/8/843.full; www.nsf.gov.

Some early popes married with children

Peter was considered the first pope. In the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 1, it says he had a wife. Why don’t they marry today?

Roman Catholic practices have evolved over the centuries to require celibacy among priests and higher clergy — though in Eastern Rite churches married men may be ordained.

But, as the reader notes, things were different in the church’s early years.

“At first the bishops were married men with children. A number of the early popes were married, and a few of them in these early centuries were descended from previous popes,” religious scholar and Jesuit priest John W. O’Malley writes in “A History of the Popes: From Peter to the Present.” “Pope Silverius (536-537), for instance, was the son of Pope Hormisdas (514-533).”

Online: www.vatican.va.

The Informer answers questions from readers each Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. It is researched and written by Andrew Perzo, an American Press staff writer. To ask a question, call 494-4098, press 5 and leave voice mail, or email informer@americanpress.com

(mgnonline.com)