Even without an upper beak, one bird in New Zealand is defying odds at the top of the pecking order. Bruce is a rescued kea (Nestor notabilis) parrot that is the alpha male among his species living at the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve in Christchurch, New Zealand. Scientists believe that he made it to the top due to his own unique fighting technique—beak jousting.

“He [Bruce] achieved this status by himself with the aid of a completely novel fighting technique—a jousting thrust with his exposed lower beak—that beak-intact kea cannot replicate,” Alexander Grabham a biologist Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha / University of Canterbury in New Zealand, said in a statement. Grabham is the co-author of a study published today in the journal Current Biology that describes Bruce’s beak jousting and unlikely rise to an alpha male. In 2013, conservationists found Bruce as a juvenile, already missing his upper beak.

He was nursed back to health at the wildlife reserve, but it is not clear how he lost his beak. His caretakers suspect he was caught in some kind of animal trap. Ever since, Bruce has not let his differences stop him.

He developed a way to use small pebbles to preen himself, which is the first recorded case of self-care tool use in a kea. These endangered alpine parrots with green plumage are highly intelligent and only live on New Zealand’s South Island. After documenting Bruce’s tool use, Grabham and his colleagues also noticed that he fought off other birds using jousting thrusts.

In total, they recorded 227 agonistic interactions between the kea at Willowbank, including nine males and three females. Bruce uses his exposed lower beak to thrust at his opponent, both at close range and from afar. He will also run or jump to propel his beak directly at opponents and the other birds do not mimic these jousting moves.

About 73 percent of the time, his jousting moves displace opponents immediately. Other keas could not replicate this move and would leave. The team wanted to learn more about this jousting move and see what it meant for his social position.

Bruce is missing his entire top beak. Image: Ximena Nelson. He came out on top of all 36 interactions with other males in the group that the team observed, confirming that he is the dominant alpha male of the group.

Bruce also dominates socially during feeding and allopreening—or grooming of another individual as a way to form social bonds. Additionally, his victories led to some other health benefits. Bruce had the lowest levels of corticosterone hormone metabolites in the study, indicating reduced stress levels compared to the other birds.

His alpha status also gave him priority access to feeders and he was the only male to be groomed by other males, including beak cleaning. Another kea and Bruce (right) face off. Image: Ximena Nelson.

According to the team, this highlights that keas have remarkable behavioral flexibility and intelligence, and has broader implications about physical disabilities in the wild. Earlier studies have shown links between behavioral flexibility and large brains and a species’ survival. Bruce shows how these links may play out at the individual level and the traits that matter for birds every day.

“Bruce shows us that behavioral innovation can help bypass physical disability, at least in species with the cognitive flexibility to develop new solutions,” Grabham said. The findings also raise a critical question for animal welfare. If a disabled animal can “innovate its way to success,” prosthetics and other interventions may not always be the best way to improve their quality of life. “Sometimes the animal can do better without help,” said Grabham.