A woodpecker (l) and the holes it drills in trees (r)
Woodpeckers are found worldwide, except for Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Madagascar, and the extreme polar regions. Most species live in orests or woodland habitats.
The diet of woodpeckers consists mainly of insects and their grubs taken from living and dead trees, and other arthropods, along with fruit, nuts and sap from live trees. Ecologically, they help to keep trees healthy by keeping them from suffering mass infestations.
There are about 200 species in the Woodpecker family. Sadly, many are threatened or endangered due to loss of habitat or habitat fragmentation. Two species of woodpeckers, the ivory-billed woodpecker and the imperial woodpecker, have been considered extinct for about 30 years.
This video by Exploration Films asks how the woodpecker could have become a woodpecker via evolution (h/t FOTM’s Trail Dust):
We humbly ask Richard Dawkins and other evolutionists to please explain how, through the evolutionary process of incremental adaptations to the environment, a bird somehow “grew” all the following and so became the Woodpecker:
- the thickest skull of all birds (so as not to get a headache from pounding and drilling);
- a very long (10 inches!) tongue with barbs to extract bugs from the deep holes it drills in trees (see #1);
- just the right kind of glue on its very long tongue (see #2) which sticks to bugs but not to the bird’s own beak;
- a solvent in its mouth that dissolves the glue (see #3) so that it can swallow the bug but not swallow its own very long tongue (see #2);
- closes its eyes during drilling (see #1) because if it didn’t close its eyes, the force of the drilling is so great its eyeballs would pop out.
One last question for evolutionists:
Please explain how the remarkable and most unique European Green Woodpecker “somehow” incrementally, via evolutionary “adaptation” to the environment, grew a tongue that grows from the back of its throat, goes down the throat, out the back of its neck, up over the top of its head, comes out of a hole in its eyes, goes in and through its nostril, then comes out of its beak!
~Eowyn
