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A presentation entitled The Rebirth of the Eagle (or The Story of the Eagle) began hitting the Snopes.com inbox in May 2007. The presentation explains that by the time an eagle reaches the age of 30 or so, its physical condition has deteriorated to the point that survival is difficult: its talons lose their flexibility and cannot properly grip prey, its beak becomes dull and bent, and its wing feathers grow thick and heavy, sticking to its chest and impairing its flight. So the bird then retreats to a mountaintop, where over a five-month period it sequentially knocks off its beak by banging it against a rock, plucks out its talons, and then plucks out its feathers, each stage producing a regrowth of the removed body parts that renews the eagle and allows it to live for another 30 to 40 years: https://youtu.be/yXTrWPvP0iQAlthough this tale may provide a vivid illustration of the philosophy expressed at the end of the presentation that sometimes one must shed the past in order to move forward (or, as often stated, In order to rebuild, you must first tear down), it is merely a myth that strays far from the reality of an eagle's life, according to the University of Minnesota's Raptor Center:
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