Woodpeckers – Tough animals
Woodpeckers are well known for their pecking behavior. They hit with their beak on trees for feeding, nesting and also to mark their territory. Enormous forces act on the bird’s body during impact. This...
Markiert: birds
New paper: Intervertebral motion in birds
Simulating motion between two vertebrae is particularly challenging because the bones articulate at more than one surface. In our paper, we propose a computational method to estimate the possible intervertebral range of motion in...
Gulper, ripper and scrapper – Publication on the anatomy of birds
The head-neck system of birds is a highly complex structure that performs a variety of demanding and competing tasks. We here analyzed the neck anatomy of three closely-related vultures that distinctly differ in feeding...
The neck as bioinspiration for technical innovations
The neck is a biomechanical innovation that contributed to the diversification of vertebrates. A better understanding of the functional morphology of the neck can help to develop design principles for technical applications. The range...