“Kids of Sapa”. Four little beautiful Hmong girls from Lao Chai Village, near Sapa, Vietnam. (Photo and caption by Felipe Hanower/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

This photo released Saturday March 22, 2014 by Stichting Ambulance Wens or Ambulance Wish Foundation shows a giraffe at Blijdorp Zoo in Rotterdam giving a lick to terminally ill Mario Eijs on Wednesday March 19, 2014. The Stichting Ambulancewens “Ambulance Wish Foundation” offers transport for terminally ill patients who cannot walk to help fulfill a last wish, in Eijs' case to be taken to the Blijdorp Zoo in Rotterdam where he worked doing odd jobs for 25 years. Eijs, who has a mental handicap, is dying of a brain tumor and has difficulty walking or speaking. (Photo by AP Photo/Stichting Ambulance Wens)

An art installation formed with milk churns, made by land art artist Gerard Benoit a la Guillaume, is seen at the Chenau de Mayen in the resort of Leysin, Switzerland August 7, 2015. More than 80 milk churns were placed between the Tour d'Ai and the Tour de Mayen summits at an altitude of 2,000 meters (6,561 feet) above sea level under the direction of the artist, to be photographed for his ongoing art project entitled “Milk churns without borders”. (Photo by Denis Balibouse/Reuters)

Mahouts return home with their elephants carrying grass to feed them on the eve of the rhino census in Kaziranga National Park in Assam state, India, 24 March 2015. Kaziranga will be closed to visitors for the next two days for a census of the rhinos commencing 25 March, in a previous census in 2013 in the park the population of the Indian rhinos was 2329. (Photo by EPA/Stringer)

A tourist walks inside the Ice Palace glacier hollow at Hintertux glacier, located at around 3250 meters above sea level, in Zillertal, Austria, 02 March, 2016. The hollow's temperature remains constant at 0 degrees Celsius, in summer and winter alike, and is also used by the University of Innsbruck for scientific research projects. (Photo by Lisi Niesner/EPA)

A mahout rides on an elephant in the city of Amritsar, India, 08 November 2015. Such elephants are often accompanied by their caretakers who ask for alms from people in the streets. (Photo by Raminder Pal Singh/EPA)

People ride a motorcycle near Koudoukou Mosque where Pope Francis meets Imam Tidiani Moussa Naibi in Bangui, Central African Republic, November 30, 2015. (Photo by Stefano Rellandini/Reuters)

“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)