“The Tibetan Mastiff also known as Do-khyi (variously translated as “home guard”, “door guard”, “dog which may be tied”, “dog which may be kept”), reflects its use as a guardian of herds, flocks, tents, villages, monasteries, and palaces, much as the old English ban-dog (also meaning tied dog) was a dog tied outside the home as a guardian. However, in nomad camps and in villages, the Do-khyi is traditionally allowed to run loose at night and woe be unto the stranger who walks abroad after dark”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A man displays a Tibetan Mastiff he raised during the Tibetan Mastiff exposition on April 7, 2007 in Langfang of Hebei Province, China. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

A sticker is seen at the Rocky Mountain Guns and Ammo store in Parker, Colorado July 24, 2012. The killing of 12 people at a midnight screening of the new Batman movie in the Denver suburb of Aurora may spark a fresh round of soul-searching on America's relationship with guns but few predict any real change in the law. (Photo by Shannon Stapleton/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)

Two young women, having enjoyed a drink at a party, dance together in Tehran, Iran. Although unrelated men and women are forbidden to socialise together many people ignore these strictures in the privacy of their own homes. (Photo by Hossein Fatemi/Reuters/Panos Pictures/Courtesy of World Press Photo Foundation)

A fisherman carries a sailfish on his head to the fish market in Hamarweyne near the port of Mogadishu on April, 4, 2016. (Photo by Mohamed Abdiwahab/AFP Photo)

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)

Ecuadorian indigenous people celebrate the festival of the moon or Kulla Raymi, in Quito, Ecuador, 21 September 2021. A circle on the ground made up of fruits and inside the Andean symbol of the chacana, multinational geometric flags and a cross that symbolizes the four cardinal points, were the setting in which the festival of the moon, the Kulla, was commemorated this Tuesday. Raymi, on a hill in Quito. It is one of the four most significant festivities of the Andean agroecological calendar, which commemorates the beginning of life and exalts women as the maximum representation of fertility. (Photo by Jose Jacome/EPA/EFE)

A member of the Fientan group, a contemporary dance company of young deaf and mute people from Burkina Faso, performs during the Market for Performing Arts in Abidjan (MASA), at the Culture Palace in Abidjan, Ivory Coast on April 17, 2024. (Photo by Luc Gnago/Reuters)