Original Article: https://blog.theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/beak-implant/

A 25-year-old Great Indian Hornbill, adorably called Crescent, was diagnosed with skin cancer recently, and the folks at ZooTampa were able to save its life with the use of modern technology. Take a look at Crescent back in October 2021 in ZooTampa’s Instagram post below.

According to the caregivers at ZooTampa, they noticed a lesion on the large bird, located at the base of her casque, a bony helmet-like extension on the head of the bird. The veterinarians at the zoo said that the lesion might be a condition called squamous cell carcinoma, a common type of skin cancer found both in humans and in other kinds of animals as well. And according to Dr. Kendra Baker, an associate veterinarian at ZooTampa, the Great Hornbills are actually predisposed to it.

Squamous cell carcinoma is usually deadly for species like hornbills, and, given that Crescent’s cancer was close to her skull, removing the cancer would have then exposed the bird’s sinuses. For Crescent’s survival, the experts deemed it necessary to do the surgery to completely remove the tumor and add a prosthetic to protect her sinuses.

Dr. Baker described the operation as an “absolute amazing collaborative project,” and proceeded to describe how the team at ZooTampa worked with specialists, the radiology team, and biomedical engineers, who worked in prosthetic creation based on 3D scanning at the University of South Florida to develop Crescent’s prosthetics.

The operation is the first of its kind in the United States and second in the world, as stated by Dr. Baker. And so far, Crescent has been acting normally ever since the operation and has been displaying normal behaviors like preening.

Dr. Baker says, “She is preening, which is a normal behavior for her where she takes the oils from her preen gland. It is a gland just above her tail, and that’s actually what gives the beak and the casque that yellow color, so what you can see with that prosthetic is it used to be white, but now it’s starting to turn yellow, so that means she is doing her normal behaviors. It is really neat, because it means she doesn’t recognize this as something that is completely abnormal.”

Great Indian Hornbills are majestic creatures that can be found in the forests of South and Southeast Asia, but the species have been suffering from severe habitat loss through deforestation and are listed as vulnerable in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.

Watch Crescent jumping around in her cage in the news clip below.

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Or read about the Helmeted Hornbill, a species related to the Great Hornbill, here.

Source: The Animal Rescue Site Blog