An eagle gets a beak
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Perhaps you remember the wounded bald eagle named Beauty? More than three years after poachers shot off her upper beak, she’s got something to crow about, according to an Associated Press report at Discovery News.
A team attached an artificial beak to the 15-pound eagle in mid-May, improving her appearance and, more importantly, helping her grasp food. ‘She’s got a grill,’ joked Nate Calvin, the Boise engineer who spent 200 hours designing the complex beak. The ‘grill’ was exposed when a bit of the synthetic beak broke off during application. But the new beak is only a temporary fix, designed to nail down precise measurements. A final beak made of tougher material will be created and attached later, though her saviors don’t plan to release her back into the wild. They say that she has spent too much time with humans and that the final beak will still not be strong enough to tear flesh from prey. But getting this artificial beak now was key to Beauty’s survival. A wild eagle that must be hand-fed by humans would eventually have to be euthanized, especially since her life span could run four more decades, said Jane Fink Cantwell, who took Beauty to her raptor recovery center in Idaho two years ago. ... Some critics question such an extraordinary effort to save one bird that is no longer on the endangered species list. But Cantwell pointed out that Beauty has the potential to breed or be a foster mother to orphaned eagles.