AN ANATOMICAL MISCELLANY
A wrybill’s beak
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Sir David Attenborough presents the wrybill
BE THEY LONG, SHORT, CHUNKY, delicate, pointy, straight or curved, beaks are almost always symmetrical. The aptly-named wrybill, a plover endemic to New Zealand, is the only species whose beak bends to one side – always to the right. The function of the asymmetry remains mysterious. It might allow the bill to be used like a spatula to scrape invertebrate food from the curved undersides of pebbles.