A woman dressed for la “La Diablada” festival walks down a road in Pillaro, Ecuador, Friday, January 6, 2017. Local legend holds that anyone who adopts a costume for the celebration and wears it at the event six years in a row will have good luck. (Photo by Dolores Ochoa/AP Photo)

Japan's Kana Muramoto and Chris Reed compete in the figure skating team event ice dance short dance during the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympic Games at the Gangneung Ice Arena in Gangneung on February 11, 2018. (Photo by John Sibley/Reuters)

Wild weather drenches tourists, Sydney, Australia on March 7, 2017. A series of photographs as tourists take a soaking on Sydney's iconic Manly Ferry sailing big swells near Sydney's North Head. The Weather Bureau warns of large and powerful surf conditions expected to be hazardous for coastal activities such as rock fishing, swimming and surfing. (Photo by Hugh Peterswald/Pacific Press via ZUMA Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A skier in a costume attempts to cross a pool of water at the foot of a ski slope while competing in the annual “Gornoluzhnik” amateur event marking the end of the ski season, at the Bobrovy Log ski resort in the suburbs of the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia, April 16, 2017. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

Bella Hadid smiles as she picks up a camera battery which a photographer dropped on the red carpet, before giving it back as she attends the “Ismael's Ghosts (Les Fantomes d'Ismael)” screening and Opening Gala during the 70th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 17, 2017 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

Lily Donaldson attends the “Loveless (Nelyubov)” screening during the 70th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals on May 18, 2017 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images)

In this photo provided by the Florida Keys News Bureau, female impersonator Gary Marion, known as “Sushi”, sits in a large replica of a women's high-heel shoe while dangling above Duval Street, late Tuesday, December 31, 2019, in Key West, Fla. The Red Shoe Drop is one of six offbeat Key West warm-weather takeoffs on New York City's Times Square “ball drop” set to celebrate the beginning of 2020. (Photo by Andy Newman/Florida Keys News Bureau via AP Photo)

“Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly) to ostriches, rheas, and kiwis”, writes Olivia Judson in the September issue of National Geographic magazine. How large? People-size: Adult males stand well over five foot five and top 110 pounds. Females are even taller, and can weigh more than 160 pounds. Dangerous when roused, they’re shy and peaceable when left alone. But even birds this big and tough are prey to habitat loss. The dense New Guinea and Australia rain forests where they live have dwindled. Today cassowaries might number 1,500 to 2,000. And because they help shape those same forests – by moving seeds from one place to another – “if they vanish”, Judson writes, “the structure of the forest would gradually change” too. (Photo by Christian Ziegler/National Geographic)