A protester blows bubbles at police during protests at the Land Forces 2024 arms fair in Melbourne on September 12, 2024. (Photo by William West/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)

Singer Taylor Swift poses at the 2016 iHeartRadio Music Awards in Inglewood, California, April 3, 2016. (Photo by Danny Moloshok/Reuters)

A beachgoer walks past a buoy that washed ashore after Hurricane Isabel made landfall September 19, 2003 in Virginia Beach, Virginia. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

An Indian Air Force person walks carrying a Nepalese child, wounded in Saturday's earthquake, to a waiting ambulance as the mother rushes to join after they were evacuated from a remote area at the airport in Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, April 27, 2015. The death toll from Nepal's earthquake is expected to rise depended largely on the condition of vulnerable mountain villages that rescue workers were still struggling to reach two days after the disaster. (Photo by Altaf Qadri/AP Photo)

Cracks are seen on one of the shrines at Swoyambhunath Stupa, a UNESCO world heritage site, after Saturday's earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal April 28, 2015. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

A model wears a floral head dress as she promotes a chain of garden centres at the Royal Horticultural Soceity's Chelsea Flower Show in London, Britain, May 18, 2015. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) activists wear crocodile masks during a demonstration against the use of crocodile skins ahead of Milan's Fashion Week, in Milan's Duomo Square, Italy, Tuesday, February 21, 2017. Milan Fashion Week opens Wednesday. (Photo by Antonio Calanni/AP Photo)