AMSTERDAM — A southern ground hornbill at Artis Zoo lost both the upper and lower tips of its beak to an injury, leaving it with two blunt stumps that limited the everyday foraging and preening that hornbills rely on their beaks to do. Veterinarians there have now fitted the bird with a pair of custom titanium prostheses — and the zoo says it is likely the first time both halves of a bird's beak have been rebuilt this way.
The project brought together Artis's veterinary team, Utrecht University's Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, the university hospital UMC Utrecht, and the medical manufacturer Amnovis, which produced the titanium components. A researcher at UMC Utrecht used a CT scan of the hornbill's skull, together with preserved fragments of its original beak, to design 3D-printed replacement parts that matched its natural shape. Surgeons from Utrecht University then carried out the operation.
The hornbill adapted almost immediately. It began using the new beak the same day it was fitted, and by the following morning it had already picked up a small mouse from the ground on its own — a basic test of whether the prosthesis could grip and manipulate food the way a real beak does. Within days it was using the beak to preen its feathers as well, according to NL Times' account of the procedure.
A beak is essential to a bird.
— Artis Zoo
Zoos have turned to 3D-printed beak prostheses before — a Dutch zoo fitted a different hornbill with a printed casque in 2020, and a Florida zoo gave a great hornbill a replacement casque after tumor surgery in 2022 — but those cases involved a single damaged section. Artis's claim of a world first rests on having rebuilt both the upper and lower portions at once; that claim comes from the zoo itself and has not been independently verified.
Veterinarians say they will keep monitoring the hornbill in the months ahead to see whether the titanium prostheses hold up to the daily wear of foraging, preening and the bird's full range of natural behavior.