A tourist takes photos in an open-air studio with a view of the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey, Saturday, July 19, 2025. (Photo by Emrah Gurel/AP Photo)

A person is detained after a shooting incident of Slovak PM Robert Fico, after a Slovak government meeting in Handlova, Slovakia, on May 15, 2024. (Photo by Radovan Stoklasa/Reuters)

American vedette, burlesque dancer, model, and businesswoman Dita Von Teese performs on the runway during the Alexis Mabille Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2024-2025 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on June 25, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by David Fisher/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A pair of otters share a soft kiss over seaweed on the Isle of Mull, Scotland in the first decade of October 2025. (Photo by David Akers/Solent News & Photo Agency)

People wade through a flooded street after Typhoon Fung-wong hit Dagupan City, Pangasinan, Philippines, on November 10, 2025. (Photo by Noel Celisn/Reuters)

Protesters shout as they hit a pole during ongoing anti-government protests in Beirut, Lebanon on November 19, 2019. (Photo by Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters)

Indigenous Q'eqchi girls practice taekwondo with their teacher, Danny Coy, on a dirt court in the middle of the village in Tipulcan village, San Pedro Carcha, Guatemala, on 25 November 2019 (issued 27 November 2019). Tipulcan village girls learn taekwondo to combat sexist violence and harassment they have suffered in their community in northern Guatemala. (Photo by Esteban Biba/EPA/EFE)

“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)