Henpecked Hornbill

Rhinoceros Hornbill, image courtesy of Wikipedia

Every so often, the local zoo needs some advanced imaging on one of its residents, and we are glad to help out.

It seems that our local pair of rhinoceros hornbills (see stock photo above) has not been living in wedded bliss. The male bird was young and inexperienced, and supposedly the female was upset over his not responding to her amorous advances. So, she pecked a hole in his beak to show her frustration. This was easily patched by the veterinarian, but our poor boy then started to have nasal discharge. I suppose that could be bad with a beak as prominent as pictured. Plain-films didn't tell the story, so it's off to the nearest CT!

Of course, Mr. B. Hornbill had to be anesthetized for the procedure:

Here is a clip of the volume-rendered images:

The sinuses were clear. There was a tiny calcific density which you can see somewhat centrally which might represent an osteoma, although I'm not sure birds get osteomas. Note the rather tiny brain. I guess it doesn't take much horsepower to run a bird.

Perhaps my next revenue source could be pet-scans as opposed to PET scans. . .