Chinese tourists watch storm clouds moving along the coast towards the city of Sydney, Australia, November 6, 2015. Powerful storms swept across the city on Friday, with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology issuing a warning for severe thunderstorms with large hailstones, heavy rainfall and damaging winds, local media reported. (Photo by David Gray/Reuters)

A man wearing a protective face mask walks past traditional large puppet figures called “Ondel-ondel”, also donning face masks and displayed along a sidewalk of a main road, as coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases surge in Jakarta, Indonesia, June 30, 2021. (Photo by Willy Kurniawan/Reuters)

A surfer rides a wave as bioluminescent plankton lights up the surf around him during the coronavirus outbreak, Thursday, April 30, 2020, in Newport Beach, Calif. California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday temporarily closed Orange County's coastline after large crowds were seen there. (Photo by Mark J. Terrill/AP Photo)

Hannah Rice, 18, jumps from a stump after posing for a photograph next to a large bust of President Franklin D. Roosevelt while touring busts of U.S. presidents in Williamsburg, Va. on March 30, 2019. The statues were once part of an attraction called Presidents Park, which has since closed. (Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

Yanick Wasser of Switzerland jumps in the Mens Large Hill Individual competition during Day 2 of the FIS Ski Jumping World Cup at Lake Placid Olympic Jumping Complex on February 08, 2025 in Lake Placid, New York. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

Large waves batter the North Somerset coast at Watchet on December 22, 2024, as Storm Enol hits the UK. The storm has prompted a yellow warning from the Met office forecasting 70mph winds. (Photo by Mark Passmore/Alamy Live News)

«Female Boxers», 2024. Julia Fullerton-Batten is a fine art photographer renowned for her cinematic visual storytelling. Her large-scale projects are based around specific themes, each image embellishing her subject matter in a series of thought-provoking “stories” using staged tableaux and sophisticated lighting techniques. (Photo by Julia Fullerton-Batten)

“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)