Harpy Eagle Gets a 3D Printed Beak

Credit: SWNS / Fort Worth Zoo

Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC]

00:05 So the first time that we examined the harpy eagle,

00:09 we noticed that the upper part of her beak had sort of eroded away.

00:14 We realized that the infection actually had

00:18 eaten away some of the bone in her upper beak.

00:20 We decided that the best thing for her was to make a prosthetic to fill that spot in,

00:29 so that she couldn't catch it on anything and potentially injure it more.

00:33 So we reached out to a group at the University of South Florida,

00:39 who had recently had a news story about doing a prosthetic for

00:44 a hornbill that had part of its bill removed related to cancer.

00:50 So we reached out to them, and they were very excited to help us.

00:53 So we had to get the infection under control first,

00:56 cuz we didn't wanna put a prosthetic over potential infection.

00:59 And then we had to actually take the eagle for a CT scan, so

01:02 that they could see the intricate details of the beak and

01:06 the face surrounding it, so that we made sure it was a really good fit.

01:10 So the morning of her prosthetic placement, she came in back to the hospital,

01:15 and we repeated anesthesia.

01:16 The beak itself looked great, there was no sign of infection.

01:19 So we cleaned it up, and then we applied an adhesive to keep it on.

01:25 And it went really smoothly, we had to wait a little bit for it to dry.

01:29 But otherwise, yeah, the procedure went really well, and

01:32 she seems comfortable with it.

01:33 [MUSIC]

01:36 [BLANK_AUDIO]