The kea bird is a large parrot native to New Zealand, similar in size to a rabbit. This endangered bird has olive-green feathers and eats everything from roots and berries to land snails and insects. A flock of keas is called a circus (or a conspiracy), which just indicates how playful and active these birds are. Their name, kea, is most likely an onomatopoeic representation of their call, “kee-aaa.” They sound like a raucous and fun group of birds already — but one of them took this a step further. Introducing Bruce, the kea bird who just made headlines in science articles all over the internet.
Bruce has lived at the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve by the Waimakariri River in New Zealand since 2013, when he was found in the mountains by a researcher, missing the upper half of his beak. Since kea beaks are highly sensitive tools that they use for just about everything from grooming to feeding to fighting for male dominance, Bruce was taken back to the wildlife reserve to increase his chances of survival with his disability. Thirteen years later, Bruce is not only surviving, but thriving: He has become the alpha male in his group!
Kea birds have a social hierarchy that is determined by fighting between males, squawking, or puffing up feathers — these are called dominance interactions. Usually, the birds bite and kick each other while fighting, but Bruce is unable to bite with half of his beak missing. One would think that this would make it harder for Bruce to fight, as it puts him at a disadvantage compared to other birds. In fact, many visitors at Willowbank think so as well, expressing pity for Bruce when they see his broken beak among all the kea birds in the trees at the aviary. However, “the visitors’ pity is misguided,” says Alex Grabham, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. Bruce did not let his injury (or whatever it was that may have caused his disability) get him down. As researchers at the reserve have observed and documented, he developed his own new techniques for fighting other birds, such as a technique that the scientists have called “jousting.” Instead of opening his beak and biting the other birds’ necks, which is what most kea birds do, he lunges forward with his lower beak sticking out, using it like a dagger. This unconventional way of fighting back seems to be catching all the other birds off guard, judging by the fact that he won all 36 of his physical dominance interactions that Grabham’s team recorded. He has taken advantage of the shape of his damaged beak and has also made extensive use of kicking with his feet.
Bruce has also been observed using unique techniques for other things, including the daily task of grooming himself. When he’s not being groomed by the other members of his circus as a token of respect for his alpha status, he can be seen using small pebbles to remove dirt from his feathers. Bruce has even made it into the Wikipedia page on kea birds for this fact!
Bruce’s way of working around his missing upper beak has been compared to a human’s compensation for a missing limb. It’s incredible to see an example of this happening, if not in the wild, but in a community of parrots. Bruce is the first observed and recorded example of a disabled animal achieving alpha status without help from another animal, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened before; it just means we haven’t observed it. Perhaps we should pay more attention to the animal world, and perhaps Bruce can teach us all a lesson about staying positive in a disadvantaged situation and about playing to our strengths, whatever those may be.
