Beauty the Bald Eagle to Receive a New Beak

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Beauty, a 7-year old bald eagle is lucky to be alive. The 15-pound eagle was found in Alaska a few years ago, with its upper beak completely destroyed by a gunshot. Without a full beak, the poor bird was having a hard time cutting or grasping food or even drinking water.

She was taken to a bird care center in Anchorage, Alaska where the caretakers hand-fed her and hoped that her beak would start growing back.

When that did not happen, she was moved to a Raptor Recovery center in Idaho, under the care of biologist Jane Fink Cantwell. While talking to an engineer about Beauty's problem, Jane came up with a brilliant idea. How about building an artificial beak for Beauty?

Jane and a number of volunteers, which include the engineer, a veterinarian, a dentist and other experts, set about this never done before task. The fact the Beauty only needs a part of her beak and not the whole beak, made their endeavor even more difficult. However, after almost two years and several different molds, they think they finally have a beak that will work.

The new beak will be glued onto Beauty next month. If the glue does not work, the beak will have to be screwed into Beauty's mouth. Even if the beak works, Beauty will never be released in the wild again because she will still not be able to cut and tear up her food.

It will however, make her more independent so that she can pick up food and drink water more easily. Best of all, the seven-year old bird may even live up to the ripe age of 50 in captivity. We sure hope Beauty's bionic beak works! What do you think - be sure to add your comments below.

Sources: 4-40.com,CNN, Google News

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142 Comments
  • Benover 8 years
    Poor poor bald eagle😢
    • The Peopleover 8 years
      The picture of poor Beauty is all it needed for me to come to this website..........[snif, snif] I hope the results come out soon, and that their positive....... :{
      • Tover 8 years
        So sad
        • emmanuel4
          emmanuel4almost 9 years
          I feel bad for it
          • calmost 9 years
            mean
            • senator_seal
              senator_sealalmost 9 years
              Cruel person that would shoot that bird, but why like maybe they had a bird and it died so they went on a bird killing rampage (prob. not though) ;p
            • so sadalmost 9 years
              so sad
              • 11037
                11037almost 9 years
                That's terrible!
                • lolygangster
                  lolygangsteralmost 9 years
                  i like every ones coments so please follow me
                  • lolygangster
                    lolygangsteralmost 9 years
                    that man he must be hangry to shoot such a loving bird