jacki long: Day 5165: Mission Safari: Kalifi coast & Woodpecker's tongue.

Thursday, October 15, 2026

Day 5165: Mission Safari: Kalifi coast & Woodpecker's tongue.

"Evidence": junk paper collage, ink, digital collage.

Want music?

Click: Michael Jackson, You Are Not Alone

2GN2S

Another cool day, we did have some rain yesterday, and some dark clouds and wind went by. The local new said some flooding in Las Vegas, so a lot of rain but not as much as needed. None here as were in a hill. Grand-dogs, Zoey and Laker are my daytime buddies, who get me up earlier than I do normally, GH#3, Zack goes to work early and comes home from work around 7 pm and we have dinner together and he helps me get them to bed around 10. There are naps when they nap, and reading makes me sleepy.

The Safari goes on and the latest photos are below.

Young lady waves, photo taken from the bus.

I believe they were to be at the Kalifi Coast today, and at the coastal town if Kilifi, about 10 hours from Nairobi by bus, but the student will travel by train, The train passes through the scenic Tsavo National Park, a mini safari and sightseeing of Kenya's wildlife, and time at the ocean, a first-time experience for most of the students.

There are plenty of reasons to bang your head against a wall these days. But if you do, maybe don't look to the woodpecker for inspiration. Scientists have long hypothesized that a spongy bone in the woodpecker’s skull cushions its repeated head slams like a well-designed safety helmet. (Indeed, engineers have modeled football helmets and shock-absorbing electronics after this idea.) But a new analysis shows the birds may be opting for power over protection.

“Many studies heavily assume that there must be some sort of shock absorption—really because if we did something like that, we would need it,” says Thomas Roberts, a biomechanist at Brown University who was not involved in the research. “This study was really an advance because they put real data to the question.”

Whether digging for food, constructing housing, or luring mates, woodpeckers bang their heads into trees about 20 times per second. And then they go about their day. When a football player rams into an opponent, their head comes to a stop but their brain continues forward, compressing in the front and stretching in the back, sometimes damaging the brain.

But woodpeckers, despite smacking with accelerations three times the human concussion threshold, seem to escape unharmed, says Sam Van Wassenbergh, a biomechanist at the University of Antwerp and lead author on the study. This impressive resilience led previous researchers to search for a specialized structure protecting the birds. Some hypothesized its spongy skull bone could act as an airbag, whereas others proposed its elongated tongue could be a seatbelt for the brain.