Members of the samba school of the Grupo Especial Independencia Tricolor participate in the carnival celebration at the Anhembi sambodrome in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 09 February 2018. (Photo by Sebastiao Moreira/EPA/EFE)

A view of a turtle during an event at the Ministry of Environment in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 24 June 2020. A Cambodian woman recently bought endangered Royal Turtles from local villagers and gave them to Ministry of Environment. (Photo by Kith Serey/EPA/EFE)

Friends pose for a picture on a night out in Leeds, United Kingdom after receiving their A Level results on Tuesday, August 10, 2021. Students hit the town across the country, downing cocktails and letting their hair down after two years of studying during the pandemic. (Photo by Nb press ltd)

The Air2 (Air Squared) floating Bluetooth speaker from Axxess CE is displayed at CES Unveiled, the opening event for the media preview days at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show, January 4, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The speaker which levitates over its own base is one of the winners for the CES Innovation Awards and is patent pending. (Photo by Robyn Beck/AFP Photo)

Police officers stand near a fishing boat, the Carolina Queen III, as it rests in shallow water just off Rockaway Beach, Thursday, February 25, 2016, in the Queens borough of New York. Authorities say a Coast Guard vessel overturned while assisting the fishing boat that ran aground in an inlet off New York City. (Photo by Frank Franklin II/AP Photo)

A man strikes a pose in front of a giant torta, or sandwich, during a press conference to promote the 13th annual Torta Festival, in Mexico City, Wednesday, July 20, 2016. The five day festival presents a variety of the Mexican street food made from the most exotic ingredients that include ostrich or stingray, to the classic ham, grilled steak or slow cooked pork. The festival's purpose is to maintain the tradition of eating tortas, and promote the vendors of the Mexican sandwich. (Photo by Marco Ugarte/AP Photo)

Secondary school students perform a barefoot “pilgrimage of suffering” to support the Occupy Central civil disobedience movement at the Admiralty protest site in Hong Kong November 30, 2014. It has been two months since police first fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators from the main protest site in the Admiralty district next to government offices in the heart of the Asian financial centre. (Photo by Bobby Yip/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)