FUJI, THE DOLPHIN
Winter's not the first dolphin to receive a prosthesis—that distinction goes to Fuji, who had the end of her tail amputated after contracting a mysterious necrotic disease. Fuji, who lives in an aquarium in Japan, lost a much smaller portion of her tail—just her back fin—than Winter did, but she also struggled to adapt to her new body. So volunteers at tire-manufacturer Bridgestone came to the rescue, reportedly spending $83,000 to build Fuji a prosthetic fin made of rubber and carbon fiber.

MOTALA & MOSHA, THE ELEPHANTS
Motala and Mosha are Asian elephants who lost their legs after stepping on land mines along the Thailand–Burma border. The pachyderms ended up at the Friends of the Asian Elephant Hospital in Lampang, Thailand, where Soraida Salwala spent years trying to build the animals brand new limbs. It’s not easy to build prosthetics for animals that weigh 2,700 kilograms—veterinarians and prosthetists had to invent a new technique just to take casts of the animals’ stumps—but today, both elephants are lumbering around on their new legs, made from a combination of plastic and metal. (The prosthetists fashioned the ankle joint out of parts from a car engine.) The elephants’ story is chronicled in the 2012 documentary, The Eyes of Thailand.

BEAUTY, THE BALD EAGLE
In 2005 a poacher shot Beauty in the face. The bullet destroyed most of the top half of her beak, leaving her unable to eat or groom herself. Beauty was rescued by Birds of Prey Northwest, and Nate Calvin, a mechanical engineer and the founder of the Kinetic Engineering Group, set out to make her a new upperbeak. Calvin made a mold of what remained of Beauty’s beak and then designed a prosthetic using a 3-D modeling software. He printed the beak, which was made of a nylon polymer, using a 3-D printer. With the prosthetic attached to her face, Beauty can now eat on her own.

TZVIKA, THE TURTLE
A run-in with a lawnmower left Tzvika with a broken shell and a damaged spine—and her back legs very weak. Veterinarians in Israel restored the female turtle’s mobility by attaching a set of wheels to the underside of her shell. The wheels also elevate Tzvika’s body, preventing her from dragging her legs and shell along the ground and sustaining further injury. A handful of other legless turtles have also been outfitted with wheels.

NAKI’O, THE DOG
When Naki’o was just his puppy, he got his paws stuck in a frozen puddle. All four frostbitten appendages were amputated. As the cattle dog grew up, it became increasingly difficult for him to move around on his stumps. Fortunately, OrthoPets, a Denver company that designs orthotic and prosthetic devices for companion animals, came to the rescue: It outfitted Naki’o with four artificial paws, reportedly making him the first dog to have four prosthetic limbs.

4 Comments

1. 1. NCStateCVM 09:22 AM 2/20/13

   Scientific American report on pioneering prosthetic limb procedure at by Dr. Denis Marcellin-Little at NC State University College of Veterinary Medicine:
   http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fusing-metal-and-bone
   
   Video report from Associated Press on fully articulated knee implanted on Cyrano the cat by Dr. Marcellin-Little:
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQCS031Xlhw&feature=youtu.be
   
   Question & answer with prosthetic limb pioneer Dr. Denis Marcellin-Little:
   http://www.thebark.com/content/bionic-limbs
   

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2. 2. jgrosay 05:26 PM 3/8/13

   It doesn't deal with prostheses, but with turtles. Somebody knows how land or terrestrial turtles arrived to the Galapagos Islands, when these animals are not supposed to have ever been able to swim, and the islands look too far away for eggs arriving there floating in the sea water? Salut +

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3. 3. Greg Angelo 08:16 PM 3/8/13

   jgrosay
   Introducing the Galapagos is a giant "red herring"presumably linked with some personal belief in fundamentalist bronze age superstition.
   
   The article definitely deals with prostheses in a number of animals including dolphins elephants and bald eagles, and only one segment deals with turtles.
   
   Those with a basic understanding of science and scientific principles are reasonably familiar with plate tectonics and continental drift, and have some basic understanding that the geography of the world today has changed from that which existed over the past several hundred million years of life on Earth. The geographic distribution of species would have been affected over that period by continental drift and plate tectonics and the current geographic location animals is quite different from the physical location of their antecedents over the past 200 million years or so.
   
   Consequently any questions about the arrival of animals and the Galapagos is entirely irrelevant to this article.
   
   

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4. 4. jgrosay 04:45 PM 3/10/13

   To Greg Angelo: Yeah!, you're right, how the turtles arrived to the Galapagos Islands is irrelevant to the article, but regarding the use of prosthesis for animals, it's not bad remembering that in some places as the UK, Radiation Therapy equipment was used for treating dog's Sarcoma, when I don't know if a waiting list existed for human patients with cancer to receive RT. Any use of veterinary medicine in animals may yield data useful later for the use in humans, and taking care of the animals is among the values praised in some men and women who were declared saints. The issue of asking how did Turtles arrive to the Galapagos Islands is not fully out of scope in an article speaking about Turtles, and your suggestions about continental drift and other geological remarks may be in conflict with the fact that for local species in the Galapagos, in Hawaii and in New Zealand, the recent introduction by men of other species such as rats, pigs, dogs, cats, snakes and others, has deeply contributed to the extinction of some local species. If the turtles arrived as you seem proposing, when the islands were connected to a mainland, I don't know if this ever happened with the Galapagos, why rats and snakes didn't arrive along? Thanks for your interest, salut +

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