THE WOODPECKER’S TOOLS: HIS FOOT
We have studied the woodpecker’s bill and have found that it is a very serviceable tool. We shall find that his feet are equally well adapted to their work.
Here is the foot of a woodpecker. Observe how it differs from a chicken’s foot, or a sparrow’s foot. What is it that especially fits it for climbing? Perhaps you will notice that the tarsus is short, and you may be able to explain why it would be a disadvantage for a climbing bird to have long legs, as well as why it is a help for him to have long toes. Toes long and legs short is the rule with the woodpeckers.
Foot of Woodpecker.
I never see a woodpecker’s foot without thinking of an iceman’s nippers with their short handles and long, sharp-toothed jaws. They are designed for similar uses,—to lift heavy weights by laying hold of smooth, flat surfaces. The iceman sets his nippers into the ice and lifts the block; but the bird sets his claws into the tree and lifts his own body.
Suppose the nippers had one short jaw and one long one, would they then take as firm hold as they do with jaws of equal length? In perching birds the hind toe is much the shortest, but they sit balanced upon a limb and have merely to hold themselves in position. The woodpecker climbing a tree-trunk is out of balance; he would fall off unless he had a firm grip; and he could not get this firm hold if his hind toes were not long enough to give his foot a nearly equal spread back and forward. Other birds grasp a limb with the whole under surface of their toes, but the woodpecker when on a smooth, upright tree-trunk nips it only with his toenails. Try with your own hand to hold a stick as large and heavy as you can grasp, and you will see that when you clasp your hand around it as a perching bird takes hold of a perch, it makes little difference that the thumb is shorter than the fingers, but when you try to nip it with your finger tips alone, you must bend your fingers until they are not much longer than your thumb,—that is, a pair of nippers must be equal jawed.
This simple illustration shows why the woodpecker’s foot reaches as far backward as forward. But a sensible objection may be raised, namely, that as there are two hind toes of unequal length, it is by no means certain which is the more necessary.
Diagram of right foot.
Scientists tell us that a woodpecker’s foot, though it looks so unlike a chicken’s, is really very much the same. When we ask how one of the front toes disappeared and how the extra hind toe came to be where it is, they tell us that there has been no addition and no loss, but the extra hind toe is only a front toe turned backward. They call it a reversed fourth toe. A bird’s toes are numbered in order starting with the hind toe and going around the inside of the foot to the outer or fourth toe. The hind toe is the thumb, and the others are numbered in the same order as the fingers of our hands. So we see that the woodpecker’s real hind toe is rather small, like that of most birds. It looks very much as if it had been found too small and as if another had turned back to help it do its work. Do you say that a bird cannot turn his toes about in this way? Most cannot, to be sure, but all of the owls can do it. An owl will sit either with two toes forward and two backward, or with three forward and one the other way. The owls have a reversible outer toe, and perhaps the woodpeckers did also before it became permanently reversed.
Foot of Three-toed Woodpecker.
That this is exactly what had happened is curiously confirmed. There are a few woodpeckers in this country which have but three toes. They are the only North American land birds with less than four toes (though many sea and shore birds have but three). Compare this picture with a four-toed woodpecker’s foot. One toe is gone completely, when or how no one can tell. But in some way the first toe, the thumb, the one we always begin to count from, has disappeared. The one left is the reversed fourth toe, as we know by the number of joints in it. Undoubtedly this woodpecker needed a hind toe, but he must have needed a longer, stronger one than his natural first toe. A toe of the right length was supplied by turning one of the front toes back, and the short hind toe in some way disappeared.
This may seem a roundabout way to show that a woodpecker’s foot is a pair of nippers. First we studied nippers till we found out that they were not good nippers unless they were nearly equal-limbed. Next we studied the woodpecker’s foot to learn about that extra hind toe. Then it occurred to us that four toes were not necessary, since some of our best climbers have but three. What was the essential point? Might it not be a foot equally divided without reference to the number of toes? But that is the principle of a pair of nippers. Then came the question, is there any similarity in their use? Yes, the nippers are used to lift heavy weights, and the woodpecker’s foot is used to lift his heavy body in just the same way, by taking hold of a flat, smooth surface. We conclude that a wide-spread, equally divided, nipping foot would be the best device possible for the woodpecker’s way of living, and we find by examination that every woodpecker shows this type of foot.
There is additional evidence that this is the right explanation. Our only other North American birds that climb on the bark of trees professionally, as we may say, are the brown creepers and the nuthatches. In both these the tarsus is short, as we found it in the woodpeckers, and the hind toe and its claw are fully equal to the middle toe and claw, making an equally divided foot. On the other hand, the foot with two toes forward and two toes backward is confined neither to woodpeckers nor to climbing birds. The parrots, which climb after a fashion, have it; but so do the cuckoos, which do not climb, some of which, like our road-runner, or ground cuckoo of the West, are strictly terrestrial. The “yoking” of the toes may occur by the reversion of the fourth toe, as ordinarily, or of the second toe, as in the trogons; the arrangement appears to be definitely related to the distribution of the tendons that control the toes. But though accounting for the structure may give a clue to its descent, it does not justify its efficiency. The yoke-toed foot is not exclusively a climbing foot. All our families of climbers have at least one representative with but one toe behind, and this clearly proves that the yoke-toed structure is by no means necessary even though it may be an honorable inheritance among climbers. The natural conclusion is that the important point in climbing is not the number nor the arrangement of the toes, but the length of at least one hind toe so as to give an equally divided foot.
There is an interesting point to notice about the woodpeckers. This reversed fourth toe is curiously variable in length. In the flickers, with its claw, it is a little shorter than the middle (third) toe with its claw; in the red-heads and their friends it a little exceeds the middle toe and claw; in the downy and the hairy it is much the longest toe, and in the ivory-billed woodpecker it is abnormally developed. We at once judge that it is some indication of the bird’s manner of life, and we look for it to be largest in the species that live continually upon the trunks of trees, obtaining most of their food by drilling. We expect to see the finest development of drilling bill accompany this enormously developed toe, and we find them both in the ivory-billed woodpecker. In imagination we clearly see the use of it. The great bird, keen in his quest of grubs, sidling hastily round the tree, in an unsteady balance and unsupported by his tail, throws one long hind toe downward to steady himself, hooks the other into the bark above him, and hangs between the two as firmly supported as in his ordinary position. No doubt he does do this, but does it prove the supposition that the heaviest and most arboreal woodpeckers have the greatest development of the fourth toe? Not at all. There is our rare acquaintance the logcock, or pileated woodpecker, a bird nearly as large as the ivory-billed, one of the most persistent of our tree-climbers and more than any other woodpecker I ever observed given to scratching rapidly round and round a tree-trunk, clinging at ease in almost any position except head-downward, and drilling incessantly and at all seasons for grubs; he is a typical woodpecker of the largest size, but his hind toe and claw are, if anything, a trifle shorter than his middle toe with its claw. He throws it out and uses it as we have described, but it has not that disproportion to the other toes which we expected to find as the result of a strictly arboreal life.
What have we proved? We have not shown that the long toe is not more useful than the shorter one,—that is a matter of observation; but we have failed entirely to show that it is so, and this can be done only in one of two ways: either by proving that the logcock’s habits are not what all previous observers have believed them to be,—which would be assuming a great burden of proof; or by demonstrating that his ancestry explains why his feet do not illustrate our theory,—and this, though it is undoubtedly the true solution, could be settled only by a very learned man.
But we have encountered one truth which must always be held in mind in science—that a theory is not proved while a single fact remains rebellious and unsubdued. We might have examined every other woodpecker in the continent but just one; we might have seen that every other one agreed with our theory, as it does; we might have supposed that the explanation was good past doubting; but that one exception—if it was a logcock—would still over-turn the whole theory; and the very facts that we relied upon to strengthen us—its resemblance in size, habits, shape, and color to the ivory-billed woodpecker—have been the strongest possible means of totally demolishing our fine theory. We have learned, if nothing more, that all the facts must be examined and accounted for before an explanation is accepted as indisputable.