Meet Kati, a Very Special Kea

[@fenika3]

Hello! My friend and I both visited Willowbank separately a few years ago and loved seeing the kea. We see Kati became Bruce but are curious if you’ve only ever had one beak-injury kea or if there was another kea without a top beak. We love Kati-Bruce :)

[@AnimalMindsLab]

There has only ever been one as far as I’m aware. It can become a little confusing because Kati/Bruce has two different names, which is why I always try to call him Bruce when publishing anything to avoid confusion, but sometimes I still go back to calling him Kati without really even thinking.

[@chrissybaby711]

My eclectus lost a large chunk of her top beak. It's Growing out well but taking a long time. Two years so far. I saw a video of a woman making an acrylic beak for a raptor, maybe an owl online.

[@chrissybaby711]

She was heavy dependent when it first happened. Hand fed her mush for months. Would have showed you a pic if I could. I do have to trim her bottom beak with tiny nail clippers or it would be growing over the top part. It was one of the most traumatic things I ever experienced

[@AnimalMindsLab]

Thank you for sharing, I can only imagine how scary that must have been! Kati also needs his beak filed occasionally, but I hope your bird is doing better now too!

[@k.jespersen6145]

Does Kati/Bruce ever get to participate in the platform experiments? If so, were there any adaptations you had to make to them for him to participate?

[@AnimalMindsLab]

He does participate in most of the studies we run. He doesn’t have any problems picking up and carrying the tokens we use so we haven’t really had to make any adaptations for anything we have run so far, but sometimes we just need to give him a bit more time to eat his rewards between trials.

[@Hugmars]

So you have kea and kaka right? What's the difference?

[@SueMead]

For a start, extra letters 'k' and 'a'.