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Nat Theo Nature Lessons Rooted in the Bible
Does a Woodpecker’s Tongue Wrap Around Its Brain? Lesson 119
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Have you downloaded the free coloring sheet for this lesson? Click the link in our Show Notes to print and color along as you listen. And join the Nat Theo Club at the link in our Show Notes to receive a full lesson and activity guide and a bonus video of content every single week so you can dive deeper into every lesson. Explore God's wild and wonderful World in the Nat Theo club@aaron lyneum.com club or at the link in our Show Notes. Hello world. Wake me up to another good Good morning. Time to go. Are you ready to explore God's wild and wonderful world? Welcome to the naptheo Podcast. I'm your host, Erin Lyneum. I'm a certified master naturalist, Bible teacher and author and I am so excited to dive into God's written word, the Bible, and His created world with. Have you ever seen a woodpecker? Or have you ever heard one pecking on a tree? Or what about this? Have you ever heard a woodpecker pecking on a tree and then followed the sound and saw the woodpecker in the tree? I did this way up high in the mountains. My family and I hiked up to a mountain lake at over 10,000ft of elevation. As we explored near the lake's shore, I heard a pecking sound nearby. I looked at the trees around where I thought the sound was coming from and sure enough, there was a small, downy woodpecker pecking away at a tree about 10ft in front of me. I watched the little woodpecker for a while as it pecked its way up and down the tree and then flew off to another tree nearby. Woodpeckers spend a lot of time pecking at trees. But why? That is what we are exploring today. Here is our trail map. Are you ready? We are going to learn why do woodpeckers peck on trees? Does a woodpecker's tongue wrap around its brain? Do woodpeckers hurt trees? And how does God shield us from harm? Before we hit the trail, let's thank our sponsors who help make this lesson possible, including Sherwood Kids. Do you love adventure stories? Missionary stories? Tales of explorers? What about nature and science books? Discover thousands of stories on the Sherwood Audio App for kids. I was so excited when I discovered Sherwood's one of a kind audio library because it has so many books my family already wanted to read and it introduced us to many books we didn't yet know about. Get unlimited access to their full library of wholesome audiobooks, ebooks, podcasts and read alongs including Ywam Missionary stories, the Green Ember series, classic literature, biographies, and children's books and novels. Save 20% and get a free speaker with an annual membership using the code nat20@sherwoodkids.com nat20 or at the link in our Show Notes Master Books helps homeschool families grow in every subject, while more importantly growing in faith. They are a trusted partner in Christian homeschooling, including my own home, and the leading publisher of Biblical apologetics books and resources. Their books are an adventure in learning, especially when it comes to things that we cannot exactly study up close, like dinosaurs and the Worldwide flood. Their books and resources have helped my family understand these tougher topics through the lens of scripture and science so we can gain a fuller picture of how God has been at work in the world from the beginning of time. Grow in faith, wonder, and wisdom with master books@masterbooks.com or at the link in our Show Notes it's time for our trivia question. Which continent has no native woodpeckers? A Africa, b Asia, c Europe or d Australia? Again, which continent has no native woodpeckers? A Africa, B Asia, C Europe or D Australia? Take a guess and we will find out at the end of today's lesson and not the club members. After this lesson, make sure to click over to the bonus video. I'm going to share with you videos I have taken of woodpeckers while out in the wild and we'll learn two fun ways to identify a wonderful woodpecker named the Northern Flicker. You can find that bonus video in the Show Notes or your Nat Theo Club Dashboard. Here's a recent review from one of our listeners. Hi, my name is Anna Claire. Thank you for making this podcast. It has really helped me learn about nature. I love this podcast so much. Keep it up. Thank you for the encouragement. Anna Claire. I am so glad that you are learning more about God's wild and wonderful world. Listeners, please take a moment today to leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts. Alright, let's hit the trail. Woodpeckers are famous for pecking on trees, but why exactly do they do this? It's easy to think that woodpeckers peck trees to carve out a nest inside the tree. A nest in a tree is called a tree cavity nest. But making a nest is not the only reason a woodpecker might peck on a tree. How can we know this? Well, woodpeckers peck on trees all year round. When I heard a woodpecker up at the mountain lake pecking on a tree, it was Almost wintertime. So it certainly was not pecking to create a nest to raise its young in. No, they peck trees. Even when it's not nesting season, A woodpecker will also peck a tree to communicate with other woodpeckers. This special pecking is called drumming. You can tell a woodpecker is drumming because the pecking is very loud and rapid, or they're pecking very quickly. Trees are not the only drums that woodpeckers will use. They will also drum on other hard surfaces. Such as? Such as on houses. Anything to get their point across. Loudly. Sometimes I wake up to Northern flickers, a type of woodpecker common in my neighborhood, Drumming loudly on the metal flashing on the side of our house. It is very loud. So if you see or hear a woodpecker pecking on signs or gutters or other parts of homes or hard surfaces, they're not looking for food. Instead, they're looking to make noise. They have something to say, and they want the other birds nearby to hear them. You see, woodpeckers do not sing songs like songbirds do, such as goldfinches or chickadees. Instead, they pass messages to one another by rapidly drumming their beak against a tree. Kind of like a bird version of Morse code. A woodpecker's drumming serves the same purpose as a songbird. Singing. Drumming helps attract mates and defend territory. And just as we learn the unique songs of songbirds, we can tell woodpeckers apart by the rhythm of their drumming. Although I think this is a lot more challenging to memorize woodpeckers drumming rhythms. Instead of learning a songbird's chorus. When a woodpecker pecks slower, it's often to find and get at food. Woodpeckers eat insects and insect larva, or babies that are behind tree bark. They love ants, beetles, and termites. Yummy. So how do woodpeckers find insects if the insects are hidden behind the tree bark, just like us? God has given woodpeckers different senses, and they can use those senses to find their next meal. It's likely they use different senses in different conditions or circumstances. And those senses can include sight, smell, and hearing. First, woodpeckers will use their sight. They might look for signs of insects behind bark, like searching for clues, such as holes where the insects might have burrowed into the bark. Secondly, they might use smell. It's believed that woodpeckers might be able to smell a special scent called formic acid that is made by insects. Finally, woodpeckers can use their hearing. They might Listen for insects behind the bark, hearing the faint sounds of them moving around or eating the wood. Once a woodpecker has a good idea of where an insect might be, they begin pecking. As they peck, the insects move around and a woodpecker likely listens for those faint sounds to pinpoint exactly where an insect is and goes in for the attack peck. A woodpecker also uses its long tongue to get insects behind the bark. They can stick it behind the bark and into crevices in hopes of catching a snack. Their tongues are made for this. They are excellent for snatching tiny insects from behind tree bark. Their sharp beaks are more of an excavating tool to get behind the bark. Then their long tongues do the hard work of twisting and turning behind the bark to find food, pin it down and snatch insects. Can you remember the three main reasons a woodpecker might peck on a tree? First, to make a cavity nest. Second, to communicate with other birds. And third, to find insects to eat. But how does a woodpecker not get a headache or worse, a brain injury from all of that pecking? There is a super smart design to protect woodpeckers from headaches or head injury. And it has to do with that very long tongue of theirs. Think about this. A woodpecker has a pretty small head, but a very long tongue. When its tongue is not sticking out to slurp up insects from behind tree bark, where do you think their tongue is? It's wrapped around the woodpecker's brain. That's right. A woodpecker's tongue is so long that it coils up and around the back of its brain. This coiled tongue is possible because of a special bone God designed them with, called a hyoid bone. You also have a hyoid bone, but it acts a bit differently. Ours is U shaped and under our jaw. It's where our tongue attaches too. We use it to speak, swallow and breathe. A woodpecker's hyoid bone is much longer than ours is. The hyoid bone starts at the nostrils, splits into two arms that coil over the top and around the back of the skull, and then comes back to the mouth, giving the tongue a long track to slide along. Muscles attached to the hyoid bone move the tongue in and out. This design isn't only engineered for sticking their tongues out far to get at insects. It also protects their brains when they are pecking at trees. The hyoid bone acts a bit like a seatbelt for a woodpecker's brain. When they peck on trees. The hyoid bone stabilizes their brain or keeps it in place so the brain doesn't get all jumbled up when they are pecking on trees. The hyoid bone doesn't only act as a seatbelt to keep the woodpecker's brain from shaking around. It also absorbs impact from the pecking so the shock of impact doesn't go all to the brain. Instead, the hyoid bone and the muscles around it soften the impact and spread it out further, protecting the woodpecker's brain. Let's look a little bit closer at the woodpecker's tongue itself. We learned that it is very long and it moves in and out along the hyoid bone. But is its tongue sticky or slimy? Rough or smooth? The answer is yes, depending on the species. God designed many types of woodpeckers with many different types of tongues. Earlier I mentioned the northern flicker woodpeckers that I often see in my yard and that drum on the side of my home. Northern flickers are unique as they mainly find their food on the ground. They especially love ants. Their extra long tongues are smooth and sticky, made just right for snagging ants and other creatures from underground with a single sharp barb at the tip of their tongue. Some types of woodpeckers have more barbs at the tip of their tongue for impaling and snagging insects behind bark. Sapsuckers are another category of woodpeckers and they're a bit unique. They eat mostly tree SAP. They have brush tipped tongues perfect for lapping up tree SAP. These special tongues use capillary action. Capillary action is when liquid climbs a surface because it sticks to itself. You have probably seen this before. If you take a paper towel and dip a corner of it into a cup of water. The water kind of climbs up the paper towel by itself. That is capillary action. A sapsucker woodpecker will use its beak to drill little holes in a tree to get at the SAP inside. Then its specially designed brush tipped tongue soaks up the SAP so the woodpecker doesn't have to work quite as hard for its meal. Now we know how God designed woodpeckers with their hyoid bone and long tongues to get food. But how do they even get to the food in the tree in the first place? Maybe you have watched a woodpecker on a tree. Have you noticed anything interesting about the way it moves? Woodpeckers move around trees differently than most other birds do. Many Birds cling onto a branch beneath their feet and then fly off. But woodpeckers are like acrobats in a circus. They cling to the sides of a tree and even hang upside down. This is possible because God engineered their feet with a special design. Their feet are zygodactyl. Zygodactyl means a bird has four toes with two facing forward and two facing backward. This foot design is very good for gripping. This is why woodpeckers can move up and down a tree trunk and cling to it, or even hang upside down from it while pecking on the trunk or branches without falling off. That is a pretty wonderful design, and it's very fun to watch these avian acrobats masterfully move up, down, and across trees. With so many woodpeckers around the world pecking on all the trees, we can wonder if the woodpeckers hurt or cause damage to trees. Most of the time, woodpeckers do not cause serious damage to trees. The sapsuckers that we learned about, those woodpeckers that eat tree SAP, they drill holes. And those holes can sometimes allow fungus or insects into a tree, which can cause some damage. But these drill holes, called SAP wells, they provide a source of food for other birds, including hummingbirds and kinglets. And most trees heal and survive well after sapsuckers visit them. For the most part, woodpeckers help the forest with all of their drumming and pecking. One reason is because they can help control insect infestations by eating the insects that live in trees. In this way, they are kind of like the pest control of the forest. And woodpeckers pecking at trees is not only helpful for the woodpecker doing the pecking, but also for many other types of birds and animals. Tree nest cavities made by woodpeckers are prime real estate in the forest. Many types of birds need nests in trees for homes, but they are not built with the body parts or the instincts to create their own tree cavity nests. So they move into abandoned nests that were made by woodpeckers. One study found that nearly 20% of bird species around the world depend on tree cavity nests made by woodpeckers. And that number is even higher in North America, where it's estimated that around 30% of forest birds use tree cavity nests. And it's not only other types of birds that use tree cavities made by woodpeckers. Forest animals, including squirrels, pine martens, and fishers, will also use cavity nests. So Woodpeckers provide sources of food and shelters for many creatures in the forest. Think about the special hyoid bone and attached muscles absorbing the impact to protect a woodpecker's brain. The hyoid bone is kind of like a shield. Have you ever seen a metal shield? Maybe in a museum or a movie? A shield absorbs the impact of a sword and protects the person holding the shield. In a similar way, God is a shield around us, as Psalm 3:3 says, but you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the one who lifts my head high. What is the greatest way that God is a shield for us? He sent His Son Jesus to die in our place and shield us from sin's punishment. Think about a woodpecker's hyoid bone taking the impact and protecting its brain. In a similar way Jesus took the impact of our sin, protecting our souls from sin's punishment, which is death. Listen carefully to Isaiah 53:4,6. As you listen, picture a hyoid bone taking the impact and protecting a woodpecker's brain. And picture Jesus on the cross protecting us from the impact of sin. But he took our suffering on him and felt our pain for us. We saw his suffering and thought God was punishing him. But he was wounded for the wrong we did. He was crushed for the evil we did. The punishment which made us well was given to him, and we are healed because of his wounds. We have all wandered away like sheep. Each of us has gone his own way, but the Lord has put on him the punishment for all the evil we have done. Jesus chose to be our shield, taking our punishment for sins so we can be free from sin and have eternal life with God. 2 Corinthians 5, 21 says, For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin so that we could be made right with God through Christ. Have you ever chosen to let Jesus be your shield? A woodpecker's brain is automatically protected by God's design of the hyoid bone. But we are not automatically protected from sin's punishment. We need to choose to accept Jesus as our shield. You see, Jesus died to save us, but we need to choose to turn from our sins and follow him, accepting his free gift of salvation. Romans 10:9, 10 tells us clearly how we can be saved. Listen to this. If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and if you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you will be saved. We believe with our hearts, and so we are made right with God. And we declare with our mouths that we believe and so we are saved. If you have never made that decision to trust Jesus as your shield and your Savior, today is a great day to do that. You can pray a simple prayer like Dear God, I know I have done wrong things that go against your ways. I deserve the punishment of sin, but Jesus died to save me. Thank you for sending your son to take the impact of my sin. I choose to turn from sin and follow you. Help me to grow in faith as I follow you all the days of my life. If you have prayed that prayer or one like it today there is much rejoicing and I am celebrating with you. I encourage you to talk with your parent or pastor or trusted adult so that they can celebrate with you and help you understand what it means to follow Jesus and grow in faith. And if you are already a follower of Jesus, remember he is your shield. He has saved you from sin's punishment and he protects you from the enemy. Rest in his peace and and protection Today. It's time to answer a question from one of our listeners. Here is today's question. My name is Anna and I'm five years old and I live in Michigan. My question is do most bats migrate or hibernate? Thanks for your great question, Anna. Do most bats migrate or hibernate? A bat's main food supply is insects, and you might have noticed that there are less insects out when the temperature turns cooler because they don't have much food to eat during those times. Bats must save energy or go somewhere warmer where more food is available. God designed some kinds of bats to migrate and some to enter a state called torpor, which is a bit like hibernation. And some bats do both of these in torpor. Bats lower their body temperature and their heart rate to save energy. Unlike hibernating animals that are deep at sleep, bats can be awoken easily in torpor. They can be in a state of torpor for hours, days, or even weeks. Bats that enter a state of torpor do so in caves or rock crevices where the temperature is just right for them to survive the winter months. You can learn more about torpor by listening to lessons 23 and 75. Bats that migrate usually go somewhere warmer where they can find more food, but some bats will actually migrate to a new place just to find a spot to go into torpor. So there's not really a majority of bats that enter torpor or a majority of bats that migrate. Instead, God designed each different bat species to do one or the other, or even both thanks for your great question, Anna. Stay curious about God's wild and Wonderful world and Nat Theo Club members. Remember to click over to the bonus video where I will show you videos I've taken of woodpeckers out in the wild and we will learn two fun ways to identify a wonderful woodpecker the Northern Flicker. Find that bonus video in your nattheo Club dashboard or at the link in our show Notes. It's time now to answer our trivia question. Which continent has no native woodpeckers? A African American, b Asia c Europe or D Australia? The answer is D. There are no native woodpeckers in Australia, but Australia is home to many fascinating animals that don't live anywhere else on earth. Now it's your turn to explore. Go on a nature walk in a wooded area and listen for a woodpecker. Can you hear one slowly pecking away at a tree, looking for breakfast? Or drumming quickly to communicate with another woodpecker? If you hear one, follow the sound and see if you can spot the woodpecker in a tree. Additionally, or if you do not live somewhere with woodpeckers, ask permission to research a few videos or audio clips of of different types of woodpeckers drumming and see if you can tell the difference between their rhythms. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this lesson on woodpeckers, please take a moment to send it to a friend and subscribe. Rate and review Nat Theo wherever you listen. Until next time, keep exploring God's wild and wonderful world. We are all looking for adventure. We are all looking for adventure. We are all looking for adventure.