Bruce on a rock checking the photographer out. Alex Grabham

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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.

Meet Bruce the beak…