Actresses from left Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Margot Robbie and Ella Jay Basco pose for a selfie photo upon arrival at the world premiere of “Birds of Prey” in London, Wednesday, January 29, 2020. (Photo by Joel C. Ryan/Invision/AP Photo)

Emperor penguins gathered together to keep their chicks warm in these pictures. Marine scientist Frederique Oliver snapped the protective parents in Antarctica as they huddled against the huge winds.The adorable birds have to battle temperatures on -20 degrees Celsius as well as winds of up to 40 knots on the ice. (Photo by Frederique Oliver/Caters News)

A member of India’s Dongria tribe faints in trance during the two-day long Niyamraja Festival atop the Niyamgiri hills near Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district, Orissa state, India, Sunday, February 22, 2015. Every year, members of this indigenous group celebrate this festival sacrificing animals and birds in worship of their deity. (Photo by Biswaranjan Rout/AP Photo)

A Nepalese Gurung community woman, wearing traditional attire, prepares to participate in a parade to mark their New Year known as “Tamu Loshar” in Kathmandu, Nepal, Friday, December 30, 2016. The indigenous Gurungs, also known as Tamu, are celebrating the advent of the year of the bird. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)

A woman holding carrying a bird cage reacts as people flee following an Israeli strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on November 23, 2023, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP Photo)

Katie Handler, veterinary technician with the New England Wildlife Center, reaches to try to capture an oil-covered goose along the Muddy River, Monday, December 9, 2024, in Brookline, Mass., as wildlife rescuers tended to dozens of birds that were soaked in oil after an apparent spill. (Photo by Charles Krupa/AP Photo)

Hira Punjabi, from Maharashtra, India, took this stunning photo of a parakeet attacking a tree-climbing lizard, which has won the SINWP Bird Photographer of the Year 2024, in aid of RSPB. She had to wait by the same tree for four days to get the perfect action shot. (Photo by Hira Punjabi/SINWP via SWNS)

“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)