A charity runner dressed as Father Christmas steps out of a portable toilet ahead of the “Santa Run” charity fun run in Stockholm on December 10, 2017. Hundreds of participants dressed in Santa suits and wearing white beards ran through the streets of the old town in Stockholm in an all charity run. (Photo by Jonathan Nackstrand/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)

Members of the SubCielo company perform during the fifth annual Puerto Rico Circo Fest in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Saturday, March 10, 2018. The festival is held simultaneously in several spots on the streets of the Old San Juan city on March 10–11. (Photo by Ricardo Arduengo/AFP Photo)

Firefighters use a rope to rescue a group of people stranded in a flooded street on July 12, 2018 in Chengdu, Sichuan Province of China. A strong storm has hit many parts of southwest China's Sichuan Province since Monday, causing landslides and floods in the region. (Photo by Wang Hongqiang/Chengdu Economic Daily/VCG)

The Duchess of Cambridge comes down a slide during a visit to the LEGO Foundation PlayLab at the Carlsberg Campus, University College Copenhagen, Denmark, on day one of a two-day working visit with The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood on Tuesday, February 22, 2022. (Photo by John Sibley/PA Wire Press Association)

A man disinfects the personal protection suit of a medical worker at a nucleic acid testing station, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Beijing, China, June 16, 2022. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

A crowd of tourists walk on the street near Kiyomizu-dera temple in Kyoto, western Japan on March 30, 2023. (Photo by Issei Kato/Reuters)

A family wearing traditional Japanese clothing posed for a photograph during spring season in one of the garden in Kiyomizu dera, Kyoto prefecture, Japan on March 30, 2018. (Photo by Richard Atrero de Guzman/NurPhoto via Getty Images)