Woody the woodpecker

Day 2 unemployment: serendipitously observe woodpecker outside my window. i estimate woody was about 19" long. he was standing rather upright. his coloring was outlandish red black and white just like the comic character.

To stake their territory and drum out their mating calls, "woodpeckers hammer their beaks into trees at the astonishing rate of 18 to 22 times per second, subjecting their brains to deceleration forces of 1200 g with each strike (for comparison, a roller coaster experiences forces of 5g and a plane takeoff is 2g). This is more than 100 times the g-force required to give a football player a concussion. Their beaks are hard but elastic; their skull bones are spongy; there's very little room for fluid between the skull and brain, cutting down on vibrations; and they have a special structure called the hyloid layer, attached to the woodpeckers' tongues to reduce vibration." 

Airplane flight recording black boxes can survive about 1,000 g and were modeled after woodpecker skulls.