this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
5 points (77.8% liked)
Science
233 readers
1 users here now
Community for discussion about experiments or discoveries made with scientific methods.
Links to articles: please preserve headlines when possible, shortening / replacing as needed. When multiple articles are involved, please consider a text post.
If there is a narrower community available, discussion is encouraged there.
If a topic relates more closely to application of knowledge than obtaining it, discussion is encouraged in c/technology.
Attribution for the banner image: Image by FreePik
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yes, that was the previous hypothesis. But any measure that cushioned the brain also makes the head a less effective hammer. They do have weird tongues that wrap around their skull, but I guess it's just so they have more latent space for the slack to go. They can extend their tongues long past their beak and into holes in trees, and maybe that's the only explanation for this evolutionary oddity.
Either way, they're very cool little birds :)