Victoria, a Brazilian goose, was the first goose to receive a prosthetic beak in 2015. She had completely lost her own beak and after hours of surgery received her new beak. The beak was heavy and bulky, and therefore, she could not adapt to it.
Recently, she was again brought back to the Unimonte Veterinary Hospital in Santos, Brazil, where she was again operated to replace the old beak with a better version.
The NGO-‘Friends of the sea’ is an organization which is engaged in the protection and conservation of marine life. They found Victoria lying on the Sao Paulo beach. She had lost most of her beak and had become very weak. Cristian da Silva Negrao the environmental technician at this NGO said that since she was so frail, they had to feed her baby food initially.
Though slowly Victoria recovered, she still had to be fed very tiny pieces of food, due to her destroyed beak. Then finally, Negrao got in touch with the specialists at the Unimonte hospital with the prospect of getting help for Victoria.
Dentist Paulo Eduardo Miamoto used his technical skills about animal dentures to develop a mold using photogrammetry data. That was sent to Cicero Moraes, a 3D designer, and researcher from Mato Grosso who developed the 3D printed beak using MeshLab and Blender software. The final model which was 3D printed in PLA and had beak airways which were added on the assistance of Dr. Everton da Rosa a surgical dentist.
After a few days of the surgery, Victoria was moved to a reserved pond with some other species. Victoria could not adapt to this heavy beak and was again operated upon.
Since it was a second time, the doctors were posed with a bigger challenge. They followed anatomical studies and conducted x-rays for a closer scrutiny.
The beak was designed again by Paulo Miamoto and the finally modeled by Moraes. The design of this beak is sleeker and more elegant.
It is now to be seen how well Victoria adapts to this new beak.
Source: 3ders.org