A girl wearing a flower wreath takes part in the St. Patrick's Day parade in Dublin, on March 17, 2025. (Photo by Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters)

A puffin swims underwater in search for fish off the coast of the Farne Islands in Northumberland, North East England in the last decade of July 2025. (Photo by Brian Matthews/Solent News & Photo Agency)

American dancer and model Dita von Teese performs a strip-tease, 23 October 2006 at the Crazy Horse saloon in Paris. Von Teese is giving eight performances of her show “the bath” at the famous Parisian cabaret. (Photo by Francois Guillot/AFP Photo)

Japanese actress and singer Anna Sawai, left, winner of the award for outstanding lead actress in a drama series for “Shogun”, and Hiroyuki Sanada, winner of the awards for outstanding lead actor in a drama series, and outstanding drama series for “Shogun” pose in the press room during the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jae C. Hong/AP Photo)

Two stags fight in a wildlife park in Aurach near Kitzbuehel, in the Austrian province of Tyrol. (Photo by Kerstin Joensson/Associated Press)

A hot air balloon flies close to the ground in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel during an international hot air balloon festival October 14, 2014. (Photo by Nir Elias/Reuters)

“A Mothers Tail”. A baby cub pulls on his mother's tail to get attention. Photo location: Masai Mara, Kenya. (Photo and caption by Tori Marsh/National Geographic Photo Contest)

“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)