A boy holds his mother's leg as he cries in front of their damaged house after a strong 6.6 magnitude earthquake at Longmen village, Lushan county in Ya'an, Sichuan province. (Photo by Jason Lee/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)

A member of the mainly Christian “anti-balaka” (anti-machete) militia trains in the Boeing neighbourhood of Bangui, Central African Republic, on February 24, 2014. (Photo by Fred Dufour/AFP Photo)

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)

A TV journalist reports next to a life-size cutout of Pope Francis outside the Catholic Nunciature before the pontiff arrives in Mexico City, Friday, February 12, 2016. Pope Francis is arriving in Mexico on Friday for a week-long visit. (Photo by Christian Palma/AP Photo)

Two Chinese farmers got more than they bargained for when they pulled up the root of a fleece flower – and came face-to-face with the doppelganger of Homer Simpson, on May 17, 2013. The large root appears to have two bulging eyes and a prominent nose – giving it an uncanny resemblance to the famous cartoon character. With two offshoot roots shaped like arms, it even looks like it is pondering or confused – just what you would expect from the real Homer. (Photo by ImagineChina)

In this Monday, September 22, 2014 photo provided by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, a young cougar is released back into Utah's mountains by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources in an undisclosed site in central Utah. State wildlife officials received reports of the cougar roaming Sunday afternoon in a residential area of the city's eastern flank, a few miles from the base of the Wasatch Mountains. Authorities say cougars generally avoid humans but sometimes enter neighborhoods close to their mountain habitats. (Photo by Steve Gray/AP Photo/Utah Division of Wildlife Resources)

To draw the public's attention to a new line of bathing suits, a Tokyo department store used live models to show off the suits on June 5, 1950. The rain didn't bother the curious, and both the girls and the crowd seemed to like the idea of staring at each other through the glass. (Photo by AP Photo via The Atlantic)