US actress Tiffany Haddish attends a photocall for the film “The Card Counter” presented in competition during the 78th Venice Film Festival, on September 2, 2021 at Venice Lido. (Photo by Yara Nardi/Reuters)

American actress and professional kiteboarder Maika Monroe is seen leaving the Saint Laurent show on February 25, 2020 in Paris, France. (Photo by Beretta/Sims/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A woman wearing a face mask as a precaution against the COVID-19 while using smartphone in a subway train in Hong Kong, Thursday, February 27, 2020. As the worst-hit areas of Asia continued to struggle with a viral epidemic, with hundreds more cases reported Thursday in South Korea and China, worries about infection and containment spread across the globe. (Photo by Kin Cheung/AP Photo)

A South Korea university student gets her head shaved during a protest against Japan's decision to release contaminated water from its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, in front of the Japanese embassy, in Seoul, South Korea, April 20, 2021. (Photo by Kim Hong-ji/Reuters)

South Sudanese traditional dancers prepare to welcome Pope Francis during his visit in Juba, South Sudan on February 3, 2023. (Photo by Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)

A lunar eclipse appears behind a gargoyle atop the old red Dallas County Courthouse early Wednesday morning, October 8, 2014. The moon appears orange or red, the result of sunlight scattering off Earth's atmosphere. This is known as the blood moon. (Photo by Tom Fox/AP Photo/The Dallas Morning News)

A female Indian rhinoceros called Maruska eats a vegetable birthday cake on her first birthday celebration at the Plzen Zoo on February 3, 2015 in Plzen, Czech Republic. (Photo by Ladislav Nemec/Isifa)

“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)