The Cassowary: World’s most dangerous bird (2016)

[nerfhammer]

Seeing a cassowary up close really feels like being able to see a dinosaur. They've got those three-toed dinosaur feet with legs as thick as yours, giant yellow saucer eyes, iridescent skin and a weird head horn. It watches back at you. You really feel like you're looking at a dinosaur. Only thing it's missing is the teeth and maybe forelimbs. Otherwise it's like 80% of a dinosaur.

[bengalister]

Having experienced being chased by a cassowary I cannot agree more, it felt like being in a Jurassic park movie being chased by a T-Rex.

I visited Australia in January 2005, it was an organized road tour with a bunch of mainly young French people and a French guide. On the way to the outback near Cairns, we stopped and did a short hike in the forest to see a point of interest (I don't remember what). There was a warning sign in the parking lot about cassowaries. I had never seen a cassowary, even heard the name and didn't know what it was, like many of the people in the group. On the way back, we spotted a cassowary, it was static just a few meters from the track. We all took pictures but stayed on the track, at some point the cassowary probably felt threatened and started chasing us. We all ran, I remember looking back at it while being chased and it ran like a Jurassic park dinosaur. It was moving really fast, at an intersection, we all turned left downhill going away from the parking lot and it stopped chasing us. It never went on the track and it always staid in the forest, it could have easily outrun us.

After I learnt the kind of injuries it could inflict to humans. The guide should have been more careful. Anyway it was a fun story to tell when I got home.

[OneWordSoln]

Yeah, we have one (or maybe two?) at our local zoo and the setup is such that I was able to be eye-to-eye with one of them from less than two feet. That thing held my gaze with zero fear whatsoever of me. Unbelievable experience. It's a freakin' war machine. And strikingly beautiful as well.

[crispinb]

That struck me too the couple of times I've seen them in the wild. I found it evoked a certain awe to come across such a strange and magnificent creature just doing its own thing out there in the forest.

[bbgm]

It looks pretty much (including the toothless beak) just the way a medium-large oviraptosaur would look like, at least in my mind.

[emmelaich]

And the feet. Compare the feet of a Cassowary to that of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

[vbuwivbiu]

and they can make a terrifying sound to warn you

[CryptoPunk]

All birds are dinosaurs.

[seventyhorses]

A cassowary recently killed a man, apparently for the first time since 1926:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/04/14/florida-ca...

This article from 2008 is also interesting:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/invasion-of-th...

[brianyu8]

In the WaPo article:

"In 2012, an Australian tourist named Dennis Ward was kicked off a cliff into a body of water by a cassowary when he and his family were visiting Babinda Boulders in Queensland. 'It just came straight up to me, decided to pick on me for some reason, I don’t know what for,' Ward told the Cairns Post."

I shouldn't be laughing but that is an outrageous story.

[philoye]

Maciej /@idlewords has a wonderful post about the Daintree rain forest where the cassowary makes a star appearance:

https://idlewords.com/2013/02/the_daintree_rain_forest.htm

[crispinb]

The Daintree, like most of our ecosystems, is in rapid decline: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/30/climate-...

[khazhoux]

Every post by @idlewords is a treat.

[mickael-kerjean]

Ive encountered a few one in the wild back in the daintree forest and I didn't got threatened at all as they were just walking through.

When it comes to accidents, never heard about anything whereas the same can't be say about the salt water crocodile that live in the very same region

Fun fact, the female casswory is much bigger than the male and it's considered down there as the gardener of the forest because it eats all sort seeds that when poo get all the nutriment it needs to grow, pretty amazing bird.

[oska]

Yes, it really gets old the constant hyping of Australian fauna as 'dangerous', mostly it seems by US American media. Cassowaries in the wild are really not a danger to humans even though they have the potential to do possibly lethal harm. The cassowary is only going to act to defend itself; it's not a predator (unlike salties).

[interfixus]

When I was in the Daintree region - more than thirty years ago - the recent saltwater croc takings being talked about were an American woman and a German shephard dog. Folklore was all about the crocs - I was only vaguely aware of the cassowary as a kind of weirded out ostrich.

But of course we all know that Australian fauna in just about any shape means business the hard way.

[lqet]

How likely is it that dinosaurs like the Tyrannosaurus or the Velociraptor had some kind of fur like the cassowary (or feathers)? I always felt that their bodies looked weirdly out of proportion [0] in popular illustrations, almost like a plucked chicken [1].

[0] https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/EaQOPDdeGgFBYevW9HZbBaraI8U=/...

[1] https://thespearnews.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/image52.jpg...

E: Appearently not that unlikely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaur

[cutler]

Bulmer's essay, "Why the Cassowary is not a bird" was the first item on the reading list for my first year undergraduate Sociology course back in 1980 in which he argues "The cassowary is not a bird because it enjoys a unique relationship in Karam thought to man." The Karam are the people of the upper Kaironk Valley in the Schrader Mountains of New Guinea to whom the Cassowary has totemic significance.

[throes_death]

The only thing more dangerous than a Cassowary are the tourists that stop in the middle of the highway to photograph them. They're pretty elusive in the wild and spotting them on the edge of the bush as you drive by is the most likely scenario, so likely in fact there are signs in FNQ warning people not to stop on the road when they spot one!

[mqus]

> Of course, Sara Hallager, the zoo’s curator of birds, adds that the keepers have a relationship with “every bird out here, except perhaps the flamingoes.”*

OT: What does that star(*) denote? I'm always irritated if i can't find the corresponding footnote.

[felipelemos]

Probably this in the end:

"Editor's note October 7, 2016: An earlier version of this article stated that Sara Hallager was the Zoo's keeper of birds; she is the curator."

Which still keeps me wondering why the flamingos?

[dudul]

Now I know why they are so badass in Far Cry 3!

[PaulHoule]

Never let a bird see your back.

[seliopou]

Rimworld makes a lot more sense now.

[Razengan]

While I appreciate the free content, it’s annoying how there are more advertisements on that page than pictures of the bird.