“He would remain in front of it for one or two hours and contemplate it in solitude, examining and criticizing to himself the figures he had created.” Then there were dramatic days that combined his obsessiveness and his penchant for procrastination. According to the account of a priest, Leonardo would “come here in the early hours of the morning and mount the scaffolding,” and then “remain there brush in hand from sunrise to sunset, forgetting to eat or drink, painting continually.” On other days, however, nothing would be painted. The creation of art, like the discussion of science, had become at times a public event. 74), spectators would visit and sit quietly just so they could watch him work. “When Leonardo was painting The Last Supper (fig. But I thought maybe, after reading this book, that you, like Leonardo, who one day put “Describe the tongue of the woodpecker” on one of his eclectic and oddly inspiring to-do lists, would want to know. It is information that has no real utility for your life, just as it had none for Leonardo. But its bizarre tongue and supporting structure act as a cushion, shielding the brain from shock.1 There is no reason you actually need to know any of this. When the bird smashes its beak repeatedly into tree bark, the force exerted on its head is ten times what would kill a human. In addition to digging out grubs from a tree, the long tongue protects the woodpecker’s brain.

When not in use, it retracts into the skull and its cartilage-like structure continues past the jaw to wrap around the bird’s head and then curve down to its nostril. “The tongue of a woodpecker can extend more than three times the length of its bill.

Da vinci by walter isaacson