The point about the beak, reminds me of this passage from Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power for some reason: “The teeth are the armed guardians of the mouth and the mouth is indeed a straight place the prototype of all prisons whatever goes on there is lost and much goes in while still alive large numbers of animals first killed her pre-only in the mouth and some not even done the redness with which the mouth opens in anticipation of Paris the ease with which one shot it remains shot record the most feared attributes of a prison it can scarcely be wrong to assume that the mouth did in fact exert a hidden influence on prisons primitive man certainly knew other creatures besides whales in his mouth there was room for him him”