Visitors enjoy a camel ride at Sea View beach in Karachi on June 16, 2023, after Cyclone Biparjoy made landfall. More than 180,000 people in the Indian state of Gujarat and Pakistan's neighbouring Sindh province fled the path of Biparjoy – which means “disaster” in Bengali – before it made landfall on June 15 evening. (Photo by Asif Hassan/AFP Photo)

Supporters of presidential candidate Gustavo Petro, with the Historical Pact coalition, celebrate after his candidate won a presidential runoff in Bogota, Colombia, Sunday, June 19, 2022. (Photo by Fernando Vergara/AP Photo)

The Nebraska Cornhuskers huddle before Wednesday’s match against the Omaha Mavericks at Memorial Stadium on August 30, 2023 in Lincoln, Nebraska. (Photo by Dylan Widger/USA Today Sports)

Women react after a deadly blaze in the early hours of the morning, in Johannesburg, South Africa on August 31, 2023. (Photo by Shiraaz Mohamed/Reuters)

An Egyptian man shows off his motorcycle skills, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Cairo, Egypt on July 17, 2020. (Photo by Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters)

A girl walks along rice paddy fields during “National Paddy Day”, which marks the start of the annual rice planting season, in Tokha village on the outskirts of Kathmandu on June 29, 2020. Splashing mud and drinking local rice beer, Nepali farmers this week celebrated National Paddy Day to mark the beginning of the rice-planting season, despite some coronavirus lockdown measures still in place. Traditional farming songs and laughter echoed in the air as farmers waded into waterlogged fields to sow green paddy. (Photo by Prakash Mathema/AFP Photo)

Firefighters are seen through heat from flames as they battle the Apple fire near Banning, California on August 1, 2020. 4,125 acres have burn in Cherry Valley, about 2,000 people have received evacuation orders in the afternoon of August 1. Around 8PM the fire spread to 12,000 acres. (Photo by Josh Edelson/AFP Photo)

“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)