Beauty the Bald Eagle to Receive a New Beak

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