While we’ve seen the beaks of majestic, soaring birds restored with 3D printing, this may be the first goofy, flightless bird to find a new lease on life with the technology. The story of an African Penguin, named Blondas, at the Warsaw Zoo may be the first report of an animal aided with a 3D printed prosthesis in Poland.
Though Warsaw Zoo zookeepers are unsure of how the penguin lost its lower beak, they assume it came as the result of a fight or fall. Without its lower beak, Blondas struggles with eating and drinking and must be hand-fed, meaning that he may not survive without human intervention. Due to fate or fortuity, 3D printer distributor MTT Polska happened into the zoo one day, with the firm’s representative Bartek Jarkiewicz, saying, “We had gone to the zoo to see if they could use any of our 3D technology, and didn’t know anything about the bird at first.…
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