Determination: silver. Adam Pelech (No 3) of the New York Islanders and Brian Boyle of the Florida Panthers crash the boards during their game at Barclays Center in New York. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

Aurora Australis from Beerbarrel Beach, by James Stone. Runner Up: Aurorae. (Photo by James Stone/Astronomy Photographer of the Year)

An elephant enjoys its back being scrubbed by the keeper on March 1, 1950. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Models Mei Jiang and Camille Razat pose backstage prior to the “Le Defile Walk Your Worth” By L'Oreal Paris Womenswear Spring/Summer 2023 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on October 02, 2022 in Paris, France. (Photo by Francois Durand/Getty Images for L'Oréal Paris)

A horse named Quinn, with a skeleton painted on it to help educate officers, is pictured during a visit by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II (unseen) and Britain's Prince Charles, Prince of Wales (unseen) to the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment at the Hyde Park Barracks in west London on October 24, 2017. (Photo by Chris Jackson/AFP Photo)

REUTLINGEN, GERMANY - NOVEMBER 17: Students hang out finished parchment leather at the LGR (Lederinstitut Gerberschule Reutlingen) tannery school on November 17, 2010 in Reutlingen, Germany. Even in early antiquity and up their hair or dried goat and sheep skins were used as material for documents. In the small Asian city Pergamon these skins were processed in large quantities for this purpose, so they formed the main trading arm of the city, of which the name is parchment is derived. In medieval times, reached the parchment is of great importance, it was such as France's production under the supervision of the University of Paris. Even now, important documents, placed on their unlimited shelf life as possible large value (eg diplomas, addresses, memory, writings, documents for primary and keystones) written on parchment...

A dirty thunderstorm occurs over Mount Sakurajima as the volcano erupts violently at 12:03 am on July 26, 2016 in Tarumizu, Kagoshima, Japan. The eruption occurred at the mountain's Showa crater. This is the first time that the active volcano in southern Kyushu has spewed out a smokestack that high since an eruption on August 18, 2013, according to the Kagoshima Meteorological Office. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun via 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)