Inside Gucci and Madonna's Oscars 2025 afterparty – guest portraits on March 02, 2025 in Beverly Hills, California. Pictured: American actress Olivia Wilde wearing Chloé. (Photo by JR)

A giraffe quenches its thirst at a watering hole at Zimanga Private Game Reserve, South Africa in the second decade of December 2023. (Photo by Janette Hill/Animal News Agency)

Waxwings in Balham south London on December 31, 2023. There has been a huge influx of this erruptive species this year. This probably due to severe storms and a shortage of food in their native Scandinavia in the Autumn. (Photo by Jack Hill/The Times)

Rainey Qualley and Margaret Qualley attend the Vanity Fair Oscar party in Beverly Hills during the 92nd Academy Awards, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., February 9, 2020. (Photo by Danny Moloshok/Reuters)

Indian actress Freida Pinto attends the 2020 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on February 09, 2020 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Emma McIntyre/VF20/WireImage)

A woman takes a selfie picture at the Poklonnaya Hill in western Moscow near the main building of the Moscow State University on June 17, 2020, as the air temperature approaches 30 degrees Celsius. (Photo by Alexander Nemenov/AFP Photo)

Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner attend the Los Angeles premiere of A24's “Marty Supreme” at Samuel Goldwyn Theater on December 08, 2025 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images)

“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)