People take part in a water gun battle as part of the annual Songkran festival, also known as water festival, the traditional Thai New Year celebrations, at the tourist spot of Khao San Road in Bangkok, Thailand, 13 April 2023. Thailand celebrates its first water-splashing Songkran festival following a three-year pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Songkran is celebrated with splashing water and putting powder on each other's faces as a symbolic sign of cleansing and washing away the sins from the old year. (Photo by Rungroj Yongrit/EPA)

Cast membe, Japanese actress Aoi Yamada poses during a photocall for the film “Perfect Days” during the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 26, 2023. (Photo by Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)

Revellers light firecrackers during Diwali, a Hindu festival of lights, in New Delhi on November 12, 2023. (Photo by Sajjad Hussain/AFP Photo)

Spain's Paula Badosa gives a thumbs up after falling on the court during her women's singles semi-final match against Belarus' Aryna Sabalenka on day twelve of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January 23, 2025. (Photo by David Gray/AFP Photo)

Kaleen from Austria during the press meeting ahead of the concert Nordic Eurovision Party held at Berns in Stockholm, Sweden April 14, 2024. (Photo by Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency via AFP Photo)

A young girl pulls on her braids during the Red Head Days festival in Tilburg, Netherlands, Saturday, August 30, 2025. (Photo by Virginia Mayo/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)

Walkers cross the river Waalbrug during the first day of the 98th annual four-days walking event, the “Vierdaagse” in Nijmegen, Netherlands, July 15, 2014. The “Nijmeegse Vierdaagse” is an annual public four-day field march which is held since 1909 in the third week of July. (Photo by Erik van 't Wout/EPA)