Ryan Randall plays the bagpipes outside a polling station in Edinburgh, Scotland September 18, 2014. Polling in the referendum on Scottish independence began on Thursday morning, as Scotland votes whether or not to end the 307-year-old union with the rest of the United Kingdom. (Photo by Paul Hackett/Reuters)

“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)

Ecuadorian indigenous people celebrate the festival of the moon or Kulla Raymi, in Quito, Ecuador, 21 September 2021. A circle on the ground made up of fruits and inside the Andean symbol of the chacana, multinational geometric flags and a cross that symbolizes the four cardinal points, were the setting in which the festival of the moon, the Kulla, was commemorated this Tuesday. Raymi, on a hill in Quito. It is one of the four most significant festivities of the Andean agroecological calendar, which commemorates the beginning of life and exalts women as the maximum representation of fertility. (Photo by Jose Jacome/EPA/EFE)

People walk past a sculpture entitled “Reunion” by artist Sam Jinks at a preview of the Melbourne Art Fair in Melbourne on August 1, 2018. The sculpture is made of silicone, pigment, resin and human hair. (Photo by William West/AFP Photo)

“Thunderstruck”. Summer stom. A super cell formed off the coast of New Zealand, intensified and swept across Christchurch and North Canterbury, February 23, 2014. Photo location: Christchurch, New Zealand. (Photo and caption by David Hardy/National Geographic Photo Contest)

A model falls over on the runway in a design by Victoria Bliss during the Project NextGen show at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Resort 18 Collections at Carriageworks on May 16, 2017 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Stefan Gosatti/Getty Images)

A model presents a creation from the Versace Fall-Winter 2022/2023 collection during Fashion Week in Milan, Italy, February 25, 2022. (Photo by Alessandro Garofalo/Reuters)

Marco Antonio Eguchi of Brazil gets bucked off of Bottoms Up in the first round of the PBR Frontier Communications Iron Cowboy at AT& T Stadium on February 18, 2017 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)