A municipal worker who helped with traffic control near a school is presented with flowers at the end of the national college entrance examinations, known as the gaokao, in Beijing, Friday, June 10, 2022. More than 11 million high school students throughout China took the annual college entrance exams which started on Tuesday after the country has just overcome severe COVID-19 outbreaks in Shanghai and Beijing, according to state media. (Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

Arcelia Aguilar, a resident of “Hogar Jardin De Los Abuelitos”, receives a hug from her niece Maria Aguilar through “El muro de los Abrazos” (The Wall of Hugs) which is a wall made from plastic sheets to protect against the coronavirus, in San Salvador, El Salvador on September 1, 2020. (Photo by Jose Cabezas/Reuters)

This image released by Paramount Pictures shows Taron Egerton as Elton John in a scene from “Rocketman”. (Photo by David Appleby/Paramount Pictures via AP Photo)

A nude protester faces off against Federal law enforcement officers, deployed under the Trump administration's new executive order to protect federal monuments and buildings, during a protest against racial inequality in Portland, Oregon, U.S. July 18, 2020. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Reuters)

A ballet student poses for a friend to take photos, at the national ballet school in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, December 12, 2019. The Soviet-style system that recruits children into a system of increasingly selective state dance schools has produced hundreds of elite dancers including Lorna Feijoo, Rolando Sarabia, Taras Domitro, Anette Delgado and Carlos Acosta. (Photo by Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo)

Festival-goers wash on Shipyard Island, the venue of the 24th Sziget (Island) Festival in Northern Budapest, Hungary, 15 August 2016. The venue, one of the biggest cultural events of Europe, offers art exhibitions, theatrical and circus performances and above all music concerts from 10 to 17 August. (Photo by Szabó Gábor/Origo.hu)

“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 Brazilian dancer performs during the flowers parade as part of the 137th edition of Nice's Carnival with the theme “King of Animals” in Nice, France, February 13, 2022. (Photo by Eric Gaillard/Reuters)