This disabled parrot has become king by learning to 'joust': Despite missing his entire upper beak, Bruce the kea is winning at life.

The article focuses on Bruce, an endangered kea parrot at New Zealand’s Willowbank Wildlife Reserve, who has lost his entire upper beak yet remains the dominant male in his social group. Researchers observed that Bruce compensates for his disability through a unique jousting-like fighting technique using his lower beak, winning all recorded confrontations and gaining preferential access to resources with lower stress levels than his peers. Despite his physical limitation, Bruce also demonstrates innovative tool use for self-grooming, a rare behavior among kea. While Bruce’s success in captivity challenges assumptions about disabled animals, scientists caution that his condition might pose greater challenges in the wild, where social dynamics and foraging demands differ. [Extracted from the article]