Beauty and the Beak In 2005, a female bald eagle was found on
the brink of starvation in Alaska—her upper beak had been
shattered when a poacher shot her in the face, her tongue and
sinuses exposed. In a land of plenty, she was forced to scrounge
for food. Raptor specialist Jane Fink Cantwell, of the Birds of
Prey NorthWest in Idaho, took in the eight-year-old eagle and
dubbed her “Beauty”. She was nursed back to health, but it
became clear that her destroyed beak was too badly damaged to
grow back. Euthanasia was recommended, but Cantwell wouldn’t
give up, and soon her miracle came in the form Nate Calvin, a
mechanical engineer, who offered create a prosthetic beak. He
made a mould of her shattered upper mandible and laser-scanned
it, which enabled him to make changes in a 3D modelling
program—then, he 3D-printed it using a nylon-based polymer. A
team of scientists, engineers, and medical specialists then
began the installation. They fitted a titanium mount onto
Beauty’s beak, then glued on the prosthetic be