The holes could be tapped before shaving down the wood, and then screws with less thick threads could be used. That would prevent splitting and still provide a secure connection.
Any screw needs to "grab" onto the side of the hole it's drilled into, when that screw is going through a cylinder that looks to me 1-3mm in diameter it'll only take so much force before it'll snap.
And that's assuming that you get lucky with the material, you might run into a knot in the wood, in which case it would just fall apart without any force being applied to it.