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    Science FridayHow A Woodpecker Pecks Wood, And How Ants Crown A Queen
    18 minEpisode 1168

    How A Woodpecker Pecks Wood, And How Ants Crown A Queen

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    If you’ve heard the hammering of a woodpecker in the woods, you might have wondered how the birds can be so forceful. What does it take to whack your head against a tree repeatedly, hard enough to drill a hole? A team of researchers wondered that too and set out to investigate, by putting tiny muscle monitors on eight downy woodpeckers and recording them with high-speed video as they pecked away in the lab.

    Integrative organismal biologist Nick Antonson, co-author of a report on the work, joins Host Flora Lichtmen to peck away at the mystery.

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    © Science Friday and WNYC StudiosLength 18 min17 November 2025Episode 1168ScienceFactsEducationalUSAEpisodic

    Agricultural Bees, China’s Energy Future, Frankenstein In Class. Feb 2, 2018, Part 1

    Agricultural Bees, China’s Energy Future, Frankenstein In Class. Feb 2, 2018, Part 1

    This is an episodic podcast, so you can listen to it in any order, but episode one is a great place to start.

    Listen to episode one here
    11+ScienceFactsEducationalUSAEpisodic17 November 2025© Science Friday and WNYC Studios

    If you’ve heard the hammering of a woodpecker in the woods, you might have wondered how the birds can be so forceful. What does it take to whack your head against a tree repeatedly, hard enough to drill a hole? A team of researchers wondered that too and set out to investigate, by putting tiny muscle monitors on eight downy woodpeckers and recording them with high-speed video as they pecked away in the lab.

    Integrative organismal biologist Nick Antonson, co-author of a report on the work, joins Host Flora Lichtmen to peck away at the mystery.

    Plus, you can take two ant eggs with the exact same genes, and one can grow up to be a queen, the other a worker. Neuroscientist and evolutionary biologist Daniel Kronauer joins Flora to share recent research into how an ant becomes a queen.

    Guests: Dr. Nick Antonson is an NSF postdoctoral research fellow in the department of ecology, evolution, and organismal biology at Brown University.

    Dr. Daniel Kronauer is the Stanley S. and Sydney R. Shuman Professor in the Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior at The Rockefeller University in New York.

    Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

    Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

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    © Science Friday and WNYC Studios |Original Episode URL. The content, artwork and advertising within this podcast is not owned or affiliated with Sound Carrot and remain the property of their respective owners.


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