
The Cassowary: World’s most dangerous bird (2016) - seventyhorses
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/behind-scenes-national-zoo-worlds-most-dangerous-bird-180960704/
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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.

~~~
nl
You were in Australia.

Generally speaking, when we put a warning sign up about an animal it's worth
assuming the worst.

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BLKNSLVR
You only get a relatively small sign on north Queensland beaches warning of
the presence of salt-water crocs and bluebottle jellyfish.

~~~
cibyr
Bluebottles are basically harmless - they hurt, and if you're particularly
unlucky you might even scar. Nothing be scared of.

Box jellyfish (Irukandji) are a different story. These days there's a good
chance you'll live (if you get to hospital), but you'll be in extreme pain for
days or even weeks.

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

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/04/14/florida-
ca...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/04/14/florida-cassowary-
attack-man-dies-after-encounter-with-worlds-deadliest-bird/)

This article from 2008 is also interesting:

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/invasion-of-
th...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/invasion-of-the-
cassowaries-10896851/)

~~~
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.

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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](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-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/30/climate-
change-damage-to-queenslands-world-heritage-rainforest-as-bad-as-great-
barrier-reef)

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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).

~~~
nkozyra
Do you think it's unfair to classify it as the most dangerous bird? What other
would qualify?

~~~
crispinb
Sorry to be a bore, but it really depends on what someone means by
'dangerous'.

If you mean 'potentially dangerous if encountered', then I guess it would be.
When it comes to birds that might slice your abdomen open, it's in a class of
its own.

If you mean 'actually dangerous in terms of causing injuries or deaths', you
could say _most_. But the baseline for death-by-bird is so low that the word
'dangerous' seems a bit daft (Cassowaries exist in decreasing numbers in areas
of relatively low human populations, are infrequently encountered and not
usually aggressive). On the numbers, if Cassowaries are 'dangerous', then
dogs, horses and cattle are all catastrophically homicidal.

~~~
nkozyra
> When it comes to birds that might slice your abdomen open, it's in a class
> of its own.

Right. I don't think the intent here is "look how deadly Australia is!" as
much as "here's a crazy animal rarely talked about that recently was in the
news."

As an American, I think the assumption is that, say, the outback is a sparsely
populated area with some dangerous wildlife like swaths of Africa and South
America.

When I think of Australia my head goes to the coasts.

~~~
crispinb
> When I think of Australia my head goes to the coasts

Right. That's where we (nearly) all live. As it happens, cassowaries are also
coastal creatures, but exclusively tropical. The tropics have been sparsely
populated, though North Queensland has been 'growing' fast, so unfortunately
the cassowary's days are numbered.

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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=/...](https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/EaQOPDdeGgFBYevW9HZbBaraI8U=/3200x2400/filters:no_upscale\(\):max_bytes\(150000\):strip_icc\(\)/velociraptor-496064806-5ac65459875db90037326596.jpg)

[1]
[https://thespearnews.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/image52.jpg...](https://thespearnews.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/image52.jpg?w=600)

E: Appearently not that unlikely
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaur)

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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.

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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!

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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?

~~~
catbird
Zoos with flamingos tend to have a lot of them. I would guess they are hard to
tell apart.

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

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PaulHoule
Never let a bird see your back.

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seliopou
Rimworld makes a lot more sense now.

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sadris
You guys are everywhere

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

